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“They are there for you”: The Importance of Neighbourhood Friends to Children’s Well-Being

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Abstract

An understanding of children’s own perspectives on their relationships and experience is essential in developing a comprehensive ‘whole child’ perspective on well-being in all its domains. Eliciting authentic accounts of children’s experience requires an approach which positions children as key informants, central to the research enterprise. This article reports some of the findings of a neighbourhood based study which sought to explore aspects of children’s daily lives, particularly those autonomous spaces of childhood away from the gaze and direction of adults, within which children enact and transact their daily lives. The study findings reveal the children to be significant users of their neighbourhood with detailed local knowledge and expertise and a unique perspective on the opportunities and risks they encounter. Their social relationships, especially their friends and friendships, were found to be critical to their sense of satisfaction, in tandem with the opportunity the neighbourhood terrain afforded for physically active movement and play. Friends and friendship are experienced by children as essential to their well-being and play is the means by which they actualise this key relationship. Consistently the children named ‘space’ and ‘friends’ as the things that they most liked about their neighbourhood.

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Notes

  1. The Child Friendly Cities initiative was established in 1996, in response to a number of emergent and developing trends i.e. the rapid growth in urbanisation worldwide, the growing recognition and acceptance of municipal and community responsibilities towards their citizens and the increased significance of cities and larger urban settlements within national political, social and economic systems.

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Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the active participation of the children who made this study possible and whose expertise, enthusiasm, insight and generosity brought it to life. I also wish to thank the Principal and staff of the children’s school, who extended co-operation and hospitality unstintingly throughout. Thanks are also due to the children’s parents for their co-operation and support. Profound thanks are due to Professor Robbie Gilligan, School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College whose supervision and guidance was intrinsic to the research process and its successful conclusion. This study was undertaken as part of the National Children’s Strategy Research Scholarship Programme through the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and hosted by the Children’s Research Centre, Trinity College. Their support is gratefully acknowledged as is the support of The Irish Youth Foundation who provided grant-aid for the study materials.

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  1. School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Margaret Rogers

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  1. Margaret Rogers
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Correspondence to Margaret Rogers.

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Rogers, M. “They are there for you”: The Importance of Neighbourhood Friends to Children’s Well-Being. Child Ind Res 5, 483–502 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-012-9146-6

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