Alexis Hieu Truong  0:10  
Hi all and welcome to Uncommon Sense from the Sociological Review Foundation. I'm Alexis Hieu Truong in Gatineau, Quebec. 

Rosie Hancock  0:16  
And I'm Rosie Hancock in Sydney, Australia. And this is the show where we take an everyday notion and give it the sociological treatment in order to see it and our world differently, more critically. We've taken on themes like anxiety, performance, fat. And the more we make this show, the more we realise there are so many terms that we take for granted, but maybe need to question.

Alexis Hieu Truong  0:40  
And today we're talking about a big one: childhood. Rosie, I'm going to revert to our old way of doing things here and ask you, like, what does that mean to you?

Rosie Hancock  0:52  
Well, okay, so my son just turned four and it's hard not to think about his life when you say the word childhood. But, you know, what I find really fascinating is that my perspective on childhood as a parent is so different to what my experience of childhood was when I think about my own memories of being a child. Like, I mean, I had a pretty good childhood, so my memories are about play and freedom from responsibility and the sense of kind of endless possibility about the future. You know, also a bit of boredom and frustration at the ways in which my little life was controlled by my parents. Now I think about this weight of responsibility and also, to be honest, anxiety about how, as a parent, I can give my son that same feeling of kind of freedom and joy and sense of possibility. But maybe that's veering off course a little bit, and we should do a show about parenthood another time. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  1:43  
But like childhood, it seems like so foundational to who we are, but at the same time, like it's so far away, like I feel I'm always referring to my childhood, my childhood, but yeah, kind of almost question my own memories of it. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  2:05  
Well, our guest today is Brenda Herbert, who is a Sociological Review Fellow, but also a counselling therapist with two decades experience of working with marginalised families who have experienced domestic abuse. And her PhD thesis – book forthcoming – was a long term ethnography with children who'd experienced domestic abuse and social work intervention. Hi, Brenda. 

Brenda Herbert  2:29  
Hi, thanks for having me.

Rosie Hancock  2:32  
So, Brenda, your work draws on decolonial and Black feminist thought to think about the injustices and inequalities faced by children in their everyday lives. And we're going to get into that and talk about love as well – which I'm looking forward to – but first, just quickly, you're the Sociological Review Fellow for 24/25. What does that involve? And how's it going? 

Brenda Herbert  2:55  
Oh well, it's, I was really privileged to get it. I'd done my PhD while working as a therapist. So for all of you who, who have done your PhD part time, or are doing it now, you know that's a real struggle: balancing work and trying to write. So it's a real privilege to be able to just have time to concentrate on the one thing. It's a big shift for me, because up until then I was a practitioner, so it's a big change. I've enjoyed it. It meant that, you know, life is a bit slower and I've got a bit of free time, but also I'm enjoying just turning my thesis into a book.

Alexis Hieu Truong  3:42  
I'm curious, like, given your experience as a therapist, right, what kind of got you into doing research, into doing a PhD? Can you tell us a bit more about that? 

Brenda Herbert  3:54  
I didn't think I would be doing a PhD when I trained as a therapist, but then even training as a therapist, I did that because I was working in a job with newly arrived asylum seekers. And because I know a little bit of French, I was often speaking to people who'd experienced torture in Congo – Congo Brazzaville – and that's when I trained as a therapist. And I thought that was just to help me to understand things, but actually I ended up then working more as a therapist, and I ended up working more with children who'd experienced domestic abuse. I realised actually the systems – like education, social care, health – systems and structures that were supposed to help them, actually, were not listening to them, were mistreating them, overriding their wants and needs. And I thought, wow, they're, they're being reabused in a way, and mistreated within the very systems that are supposed to be helping them. So I, because I was trained psychodynamically, really wanted to look at why, why does the system do that? Why does the system end up  retraumatising the people that they're supposed to be helping? But then when I went to look at that, I realised actually that very little research is actually done with children who've experienced domestic abuse. So that's where my focus changed.

Rosie Hancock  5:27  
I mean, I find it so interesting how you've moved from therapy to sociology, because – I mean to, I guess, to grossly simplify – the psy disciplines, if you will, are often seen as individualising people's problems. So talking about their kind of individual brains, their characters, their personalities, whereas sociology looks at, as you've just spoken about, these bigger systems and, and their effect on individual lives. Would, would you say, given your experience in both worlds, that that's a fair point, with maybe social work kind of sitting somewhere in the middle? How would you characterise this? 

Brenda Herbert  6:03  
Oh I always used to joke with my colleagues that as a therapist I was seen as too sociological, and, and within the sociology department, maybe I was too psychoanalytical. So, so yes, there is that big divide. And I think there is a book called The Big Divorce, or something, about how sociology and psychoanalytical study separated. But I think your assessment is quite fair, because I think psychotherapists and psychologists and the psychs, we can just look at the individual too much. It's about, so called, fixing the individual or meeting the individual needs, and not taking into account the world that they live in, which is affecting them. But, at the same time, sociology can be too structure and structure-based, and doesn't give the individual enough space to show their subjectivity, their individuality. But I think that's where Frantz Fanon comes in, actually, because I think he does an amazing job. 

Rosie Hancock  7:20  
Yeah, we're going to ask you some about, or like mention Fanon in a little bit. But actually, it would be great if we could sort of talk about your research for a little bit and how you figured out that this needed, that the project that you did needed to be done. Because you were struck by, I believe, by what was kind of a gap in, in or even a lack in the literature, and could you tell us about that and how that helped you shape your focus and your study?

Brenda Herbert  7:49  
So I was really adamant that I was going to look at systems, and I thought I would maybe interview social workers, and there may be some families, and I was going to go down that route. And when I looked at the literature, actually, I found that very little had been done with children who've experienced domestic abuse, and that which is done is often kind of one-off interviews. It's always about just domestic abuse, and it was never about other parts of their lives. And so I started to think, well, where are the children? There's lots of literature about the damage of domestic abuse. There's lots of literature of how to make the services better, but there's really little about children and their personhood and their experience beyond domestic abuse. I was really, really stumped, actually, because what's often said within social work and other disciplines is that, you know, how children are so important. But here we hear very little about children and what actually is important to them.

Alexis Hieu Truong  9:00  
What you're painting in terms of, like, this gap or this lack in the literature, it seems is really like this content, this knowledge that had been produced about children, right? But really by adults, like researchers, adults, really documenting what they perceive to be the experiences of children, like services and so on. And I guess, like, if we think about, let's say, kind of more like in the activist circles, right, there's this idea of, like, nothing about us without us. And I guess there's, there's this concept, like Miranda Fricker kind of brought this concept of epistemic injustice that we've referred to in the past, but also brings back a lot of reflections on the voices that are kind of forgotten or unheard in research. And I'm wondering, could you tell us maybe a bit more about this concept of epistemic injustice?

Brenda Herbert  9:57  
Yes, yes. I think I had a real light bulb moment, because I went to the ICA in London – which is Contemporary Art, Institute for Contemporary Art – and Hortense Spillers, Black feminist scholar, was speaking with Gail Lewis, who I absolutely love. And they were talking about Black feminist work, and Hortense Spillers said something about how black women are often excluded from creating knowledge about their own lives. And I thought, that's it. That's exactly what is happening to the children who've experienced domestic abuse. That through different ideology and concepts, they are being excluded from creating knowledge about their own lives. And I thought, aha. And that, to me, is the epistemic injustice. I mean, for me, epistemic injustice is really about who can create knowledge, whose knowledge counts. And for the children, (a) they were seen as not being able to create knowledge, and (b) that their knowledge actually didn't count. And when I looked at it further, holding them in that position also meant that what I would describe as a patriarchal, colonial understanding and the social norm continues. It's embolden. And the reason I say that, for example, with children who've experienced domestic abuse, they were often positioned as being too vulnerable to create knowledge or too vulnerable to know. And so what happens then is that, researchers show, basically that when it comes to decisions in the courts, in the family courts, children, voices about, for example, whether they want to see a father who has, you know, done domestic abuse in the home, children's voice about seeing their father, if they agree with seeing their father, that's often taken into consideration. If they agree not to see their father, then, actually, rather than the father's behaviour having to be changed, it's the child's opinion that has to be changed. And that's, I think MacDonald's research is about that, but it's like, but children are seen so vulnerable they can't create knowledge and therefore the knowledge they have about abuse is not taken into account in their care. 

Rosie Hancock  12:47  
Yeah. And so, I mean, I know in your own work, you tried to remedy some of this lack and the neglect of children's actual voices. And so, I mean, I just love the method that you used in your study, you ended up meeting with and kind of hanging out with ten children once a week for 18 months, using things like play and photography. But I'm wondering, Brenda, is this gap in the literature and the situation you're describing a UK or Europe specific thing, or do you think it's broader? Is anywhere kind of bucking the trend, I guess?

Brenda Herbert  13:26  
Is anywhere bucking the trend? I would say, like in the post-industrial countries, we've basically built our systems on the assumption that children are unknowing, and that's really crucial, I think, to keeping up a patriarchal, colonialist kind of regime, because we're very tied up with the child as being innocent. And that's very much embedded in kind of colonial thinking where the idea of the child is based on basically a white male child, and also it's really – in order to keep the status quo – the child must be seen as an empty vessel that you pour in, you pour in knowledge, and the right knowledge, so that they then can continue this social, the social norm. So children who are knowing or seem to be knowing are then pathologised because they're challenging the status quo. And so that's why, you know, I kind of really reject that whole notion of innocent child, because I kind of feel like innocence, it's only given to certain children. Other children are always seen as not innocent, and therefore not seen as children, and therefore harm can be done to them and justified. Is there anywhere bucking the trend? I really don't know the answer to that. I think I specialise probably more in how children are treated in the UK and, and I think there is a great divide as to who is counted as a child and who isn't, and that's reflected in policies and resources, and that's also something that happens in countries that had been colonised by Britain as well, that Britain very much kind of divided children there, as those from the white colonialist families were considered children, but others weren't considered children.

Alexis Hieu Truong  15:40  
You mentioned Erica Burman's book Child as Method, and I was kind of wondering, like, can you tell us more about Burman and how this ties into, like, decolonisation? Like, I feel that that's so fascinating, like, we're used to hearing that the term decolonisation in the context of, say, like national cultures or the curriculum, not childhood and the family specifically. So could you, could you elaborate a bit more on that? 

Brenda Herbert  16:06  
I mean, I have to confess I'm a big fan of Erica Burman. So she's a critical psychologist theorist, but she does actually a lot of work around education as well, but what she does is really critique, she really pulls apart, basically, how the figure of the child is used for political gains really and constructing, kind of, like a colonial social norm. But she uses Frantz Fanon's work, and she looks how the child is used in Frantz Fanon's work and, and then she comes up with different tropes of the child. So she's not looking at an individual child or children per se, but more about the figure of the child and how that is used to keep up social norms and the status quo. So I think what Erica does really well is actually show how the figure of the child is actually really tied up with nation building, and how, how we control, how we see children – on an ideological level – really shapes society, and actually can keep on, how would I say, supporting the status quo.

Rosie Hancock  17:33  
I mean, I know that, I mean, Burman has her own tropes, right, that, that she kind of articulates in her work, but then you also propose three of your own: the passive child, the early years child, and then there's the fugitive child, which you know, not a child that's run away, but a child who departs from the expected norm, and so can be blamed and intervened upon, right? And you take inspiration here also from Akwugo Emejulu – who, by the way, was a guest on our show – and so I wonder if you could explain and like, like, tell us about your idea of the fugitive child? 

Brenda Herbert  18:10  
Yes. So I went again – it's like I should be paid from the ICA, commissioning. But, but yeah, I went to another talk. And this is all because I was trying to find my way through the literature. I just couldn't understand why there wasn't more research with children. And so I went to a talk by a professor, Emejulu, and she talked about fugitive feminism. And she was talking about how Black feminists, Black women were like on the margins, and that actually of feminism, and actually that's a place of creativity as well, and a place where they kind of like are and they can resist and uphold each other. And I thought, oh, actually, this is happening with children as well. It's that there are lots of children who don't fit the kind of like stereotype of what a child should be. They're not fitting this idealised idea of a child. They're, they're on the margins. They don't fit mainstream idolised ideas of children and childhood, but they're still very much kind of like living their lives and being who they are, having their fun and you know, but also being part of that also means they're seen by society in different ways and get treated differently. And so, so in terms of, say, Black children, and we know, like within the social work care system, actually, there's a higher proportion of Black children within it than actual, in proportion to how many Black children there are in the, in the country, and, and why is that so? And, and some of it is, is the way that families are treated within the system. And that's also how people see children as well, and especially Black children and how they can make assumptions about them without even knowing them, and that can put the children more at risk. And so like case reviews have shown that actually very little is paid to the everyday lives of Black children and from the professionals in their lives, because they're working on stereotypes and assumptions about children, which actually is detrimental to the wellbeing of the child. So, so there are lots of children who are not seen as children, children who are refugees sometimes are mistreated, sometimes not believed about their age, and so we've got these tests to check whether they're the right age, but that's all about controlling borders, because if they are then recognised as a child, then they would have to be afforded the rights of a child. And we are so, in this country, so anti-refugees, anti-migrants that we would rather not see a child as a child, because it doesn't fit into our way of thinking. I say we, but that, you know, I'm talking about the right wing agenda within this country. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  21:36  
The elements that you're, that you're identifying, I feel are like so important in the way that this question of age, right, intersects with these other power relations, right? Patriarchy, colonial, decolonial, like, relations. And there's, so it's just kind of like these two things, right? There's, there's like, whether we consider that children have the capacities to actually develop knowledge about their own conditions. Like, do they even understand, oh, when we say, like, oh, when you grow up and so on, right? So it's like, do we, do we afford them with this idea that, that the children understand their own situations? And then whether or not we do, the kind of power relations that go into kind of silencing their voices and just like turning a blind eye and so on, and how that is so embedded in those other power relations, right, that you've identified. And kind of like – and as we pointed like earlier, right – your methodology, like you have a way of doing things that's very empirical, going to get the experiences. So if we move away from the, just a bit, away from the theory and kind of try to understand, like, how the actual experiences of children are core elements of your work. Like, often it's through powerful stories that are shared with you, like what you've observed interacting with children and so on. And, and I guess I'm wondering, like, in terms of field work, would you have some, some examples to share with us of that? I know that there's, I think that there was this, this, this seven-year-old boy who, in your work is named Mystical. I think that there was one story that you explored? 

Brenda Herbert  23:26  
Yeah, it was such a privilege actually to meet Mystical. Yeah, he's a seven-year-old boy at the time of the research, and I've changed some of the details – because Mystical isn't his real name, in order for them to remain anonymous – but essentially Mystical really wanted to be part of the research, and he was very keen on meeting up once a week, either through WhatsApp video call or in person, but his family was going through the child protection system. And part of the issue was his mother and father had separated due to domestic abuse, but part of it actually was that now – and this, this happens more often than not, I think it surprises people – but it was the mother who was under scrutiny for the child protection service. So he was living with his mother, but they were questioning her ability to look after her children, to mother her children, and when, when we were, like, just doing some of the kind of, like, arts and craft, I asked him, oh, you've taken a lot of pictures about food. Why have you taken a lot of pictures about food? And he says, oh, my mum told me to take pictures, I took pictures about food. And then he just, throw away comment, he said, oh, because the council – meaning the social worker – doesn't think she feeds me, well. And so in one hand, you could see, oh, has the mother, you know, kind of made him take pictures of food to prove? But actually there were so many, and he just kept taking them and he was very much on his, you know, you know, showing me his mother's love for him and care. And at the end, I said, oh, you know, you can take a sticker if you want. And he asked me, can I take a sticker for my mum? And he took a sticker for his mum because he wanted to give his mum a sticker to show that she's a good mum. So even though he's seven years old, he knows what's going on. You know, he, he said to me, oh, the social worker isn't very kind. She doesn't speak kindly to my mum. And so he was picking up, actually, what was happening. But yet his knowledge about his situation was often dismissed because he was close to his mum. So there was this whole thing going on about maybe his mum was putting ideas in his head, rather than he had his own ideas. And this is where it comes really tricky in family courts as well, because sometimes when children say they don't want to see their fathers, this term parent, parental alienation comes up, yeah, which has been debunked, yeah. There's been, you know, papers written on that. It's basically saying that if a child doesn't want to see their father, that it's because the mother's put ideas into their head, even if there's been a history of domestic abuse.

Rosie Hancock  26:46  
Yeah. 

Brenda Herbert  26:46  
So you can see how it's quite warped, actually. So mothers are then placed in this kind of like difficult position of wanting the best for their child, but knowing that they have to force their child to go and see their father who they don't want to see, because if they don't then they'll be in contempt of court, or they'll be accused of parental alienation. But at the same time, their relationship with their child is being affected, because they're forcing their child to do something that they don't want to do. 

Rosie Hancock  27:22  
I mean, it kind of strikes me that the term agency is lurking behind everything we've talked about today. And it's interesting you just kind of reflected on a little bit of maybe a catch-22 for mothers, but I think there's also one for the, for kind of children as well, because it seems like there's a challenge that if we attribute too much agency to children, we risk leaving them vulnerable, but we also make them vulnerable if we attribute too little agency to them as well. But you know, I mean – this is maybe a little bit of an aside, but – Brenda, I know you're a parent and I wonder whether doing this work has led you to reflect on how the tropes that you found in terms of these marginalised children conflict with those found in wider parenting literature? I mean, there's like a, there's, there's a good bit out there on the bookshelves now about validating children, respecting the whole child, not seeing adults as superior beings, etc, you know, but are we, it seems like these are two separate worlds that we're talking about here. 

Brenda Herbert  28:27  
Yeah. Oh, it's a tricky one, but it's also, I think agency is about being in relation, isn't it? And in different relationships, we have different powers as well, and, and that can hinder how we act. Because one of the questions that have come to me – a critique – has been, oh, but, you know, but there are mothers who alienate their children. And I think, yes, there are, but we always need to go back to find out what the child wants, what the child needs and to listen to the child, not dismiss their, what they're saying outright, because they're being influenced. They could be influenced, but we still need to have that relationship to find out, you know, where their thoughts are coming, and they have different ways of communicating in different settings. Because I think you're right, it's that I don't hold children as knowing everything at all, because none of us do, you know, we always come from a position of being influenced by somebody or something. So I'm not one to say that children are the truth bearers, not at all, because they're just like us. You know, they can kind of replicate prejudice that they see happening around them. They can also, you know, make their own decisions. But I think it's that whole thing of children don't know everything and sometimes the power relations has an effect on what children say or don't say, but, but I think that's the same with adults as well. You know, sometimes we withhold things, sometimes we say things, sometimes we're coerced as well. And I think that's the same with children. And I think any knowledge created has to be in relation but that doesn't mean that children aren't still trying to make sense of their world, and actually that sometimes they come up with little nuggets that are just really profound as well. So I think, like you said, the world tries to hold it in binary positions, that either you know children tell the truth and they are knowers, you know, bearers of knowledge, or they don't, you know, but actually it's more in the middle. Like us, really. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  30:55  
It's interesting with, with you, you say, with like, like, we're not assuming like children know everything, but it feels kind of like the default position is like that they know nothing. It kind of ends up being that, just by default. And, and, and, I guess pointing to the other elements that you've talked about, it's like that becomes a huge issue, especially for institutions like health, law and so on, where these institutions are also tasked with the wellbeing and with representing these small citizens, right? It's quite an important aspect. Brenda, we're going to cut now for a break. Back with you after that to talk about live methods and love.

Alice Bloch  31:46  
Hi, I'm Alice. I produce this show, and you're listening to Brenda Herbert, the Sociological Review Fellow for 2024/25, talking about childhood. There's a lot to learn from this one, and we're going to put as much as we can in our show notes, which you'll find in the app you're using to hear this and over on the podcast page at thesociologicalreview.org. And, if you like this, make sure you follow us so you're the first to hear our next episode after the August break, that will be on love and reproduction with Alva Gotby. I also want to make a request that we've made a few times now, but that stays as important as ever. You might be aware that the Sociological Review Foundation is a charity. We're hard at work advancing public understanding of sociology, which remains such an important task in 2025. So, if you can, please do consider making a contribution, however small or big. To help the Foundation keep bringing this podcast to you, head to donorbox.org/uncommon-sense. That link is also in our show notes, and there you can directly support the making of Uncommon Sense with every donation really gratefully received. Thanks for listening.

Alexis Hieu Truong  33:00  
Okay, Brenda, we're going to shift gears a bit here and talk about something that has shaped your work, made you see differently. I know you wanted to talk about bell hooks, but actually Akwugo Emejulu beat you to it last season in our episode on joy. Still, I guess we are going to pick up on a particular theme of hooks', which is love, because we want to talk now about how your own realisations and I guess reckoning with love led you to pursue something called live methods in your work. Like, first up, I guess, like, what are live methods?

Brenda Herbert  33:42  
Yeah, good question, actually, because sometimes I find it – I was a bit audacious, actually, even putting an abstract into, to write the article for the Live Methods Revisited because, actually, I am just not a methods person in a way. Okay, so this is good. This sounds really odd, but like I came to the way I did my research, really, because I really wanted to find out with children what was important to them. So I tried to work out what was the best way. And actually, in writing that paper about live methods and love, I realised actually there was another energy that was really like, that was kind of like helping me to create a research relationship with the children. And that meant doing things that I was uncomfortable with, in terms of me being a technophobe, not being able to draw, any of that thing. And I think what live methods is, I think it's in the word live. It's living, you know, and it's breathing, and it's shaping methods that are just not static, not kind of like, oh, I'm going to just do question and answer interview, and that's all, you know, no matter what. It's just like knowing that your methods actually is going to influence the knowledge that you create, and what kind of knowledge do you want to create, and what is that relationship with the people you are creating that knowledge with, and what topics are you really addressing when you're using your methods? And I think that's what live methods is about. It's about really thinking through whether your methods are live, whether it's, you know, engaging. And I think that's one thing that I got stuck with when I looked at the literature around children, domestic abuse. I felt that the methods they were using, like these one-off interviews, were like the same things that social workers were doing. It was like the social work practice done badly. I just want to say there are some great social workers out there. I could come across as very anti-social workers, but I'm not. I'm just saying that sometimes the framework which they are working within can be very constraining, and so that was happening in research as well, and that's why, reluctantly – and I have to say this – I was a really reluctant ethnographer. When I first did my proposal for my PhD, I gave all the reasons why ethnography would not work, and there I was, at the end doing ethnography with children, because I found out, actually, the only way I can really find out what's important to children is actually to spend time with them. 

Rosie Hancock  36:58  
Could you tell us about how love drove you towards this type of, this type of work because, I mean, like, I wonder whether love could also be a reason for not doing this stuff? Like, you know, some of the, the experiences that these children have is so heartbreaking and, in a way, it might be easier as a researcher or tidier to have, like, a more just, you know, like a more contained data set, in a way.

Brenda Herbert  37:28  
Oh, this is where I have to go to my first academic love, bell hooks, because, you know, she really describes love as, you know, action. And love fights against injustice and love also at the key is wanting to see another flourish as you flourish. And I think that is so important in research. I think, for me, I wanted to see the children flourish. I wanted others to see them as their own person in their complex world. And not just, not just as you know a child who's experienced domestic abuse, but I wanted people to see them in their whole world and what they wanted to show. And I think, I think a lot of that comes to my own childhood. And that's the other thing about children and child is that we have all been children. Everyone has been a child, and that's why everyone thinks they also know it as well. But actually, there's a lot of stuff, political, you know, going around – what is a child and who counts as a child – and it's not as normal as we think or natural as we think it is. So I think part of that, having grown up myself on a council estate and seeing my own life misrepresented, I didn't want that to happen to the children. I see that happen with children I work with as a therapist, and I just didn't want that to happen. And I think that is love. That is when you want the best for the other person and the other person's growth, then I think that is love. But I know we don't really talk about that in research, do we in academic field?

Alexis Hieu Truong  39:21  
Yeah, I feel like hearing you talk, we can really get this sense of care and love for the people that you're working with. And it kind of also bounces back to these elements that you talked about earlier, about how these processes, extractive processes, can, can generate more violence in the lives of said children. So whether by revictimisation or and so on, right, it can exacerbate or further the research. And the idea is not only to just be neutral, but, but as you've mentioned, like there's something there, a potential of flourishing, right? So it, you're talking about love, it really feels as though it's it's a tool, like something ethical, something methodological. It's like something that we need to have and not just be a neutral scientist, kind of coming into the, into the portrait. But I was wondering, like this term, like this concept of love, how is it like typically thought of in sociology?

Brenda Herbert  40:20  
It's often seen as something that we study rather than we research with. So it's like, how do people conceptualise love? How do they find love in their lives? What do they think of love? How does love shape society? How is it commodified? But I think Black feminist work, and, you know, I draw on Audre Lorde, bell hooks, June Jordan, who writes beautiful essays about children and with children. I draw on their work because actually they see it as a creative force. So it's not just about talking and studying love, but actually, how do we work with love? You know, how do we work in a loving way? And for them, it's both creative, it's a praxis, it's a way of being. And June Jordan talks about, you know, things come into her as if spontaneously, but she says, that's love's creative force. And actually, I kind of understand that, because now when I look back at my research I think, wow, that was crazy to do. You know, I was talking to a lovely, lovely friend, and sometimes it takes other people to remind you what you've done, because she said, yeah, remember you were working. COVID restrictions were happening at that time, also my dad wasn't very well, and yet you kind of like managed to get these art packs together with the children and saw through the COVID restrictions to then be in person with them and to carry on. But I think what really drove me was the fact that the children were so enthusiastic about doing the research. And as long as it was safe for them and for me, we'll just do it. But they were so enthusiastic. I felt like not to do the research would be letting them down. Actually, not doing the research would have been unethical. But also, the working class kid in me was also thinking, we always have these kind of research and the children who speak up or get researched, you know, in England about these things are generally the more affluent, privileged children. And I think we never think about children who are, who have social work intervention, having important things to say about a pandemic, or important things to say about global warming. We just kind of pigeonhole them. 

Rosie Hancock  43:01  
I mean, finally, Brenda, I wanted to end on a question about not knowing, because we've spoken about, we've spoken about children and do they know, like, what do they know, what do they not know and how do we position them? But I wanted to reflect on that in this kind of last question as a researcher, and what as researchers we know and don't know, because this seems kind of related to the idea of love. It's to acknowledge that we don't know as a researcher, is to take a leap of faith and to accept our own vulnerability. I know Fanon wrote about the importance of not knowing as well and so I wonder if you could, I wonder if you could briefly speak about, you know, your take on not knowing as a researcher?

Brenda Herbert  43:01  
I think it is quite scary, because there were so many times that I really thought, am I even going to be able to write anything? You know, is this even research? Because when I did the art packs with children and I left it on their doorstep, it really was just a kind of act of faith, really, in the sense of, I didn't know what would happen. I didn't know if they were going to use it. I just felt that we needed to make a connection and keep connected throughout these physical restrictions for COVID. And I didn't know what was going to, going to happen and, and part of that was also freeing, because then I allowed the children to have the space, to bring whatever they wanted. And sometimes when I was having these WhatsApp video calls with them, I really didn't know what was happening. There was one time when I was like talking to to children, and they'd just disappear and leave me, and then they'd come back and they said, ah, we were just hiding. But I didn't know they were hiding. I'm just staring up at the ceiling. Or they'll just kind of like, tell me, jokes, jokes, jokes that had no punch lines whatsoever. And then I'd be like, writing in my notebook, but I'm like, you know, I didn't know what to write, because it was just jokes, jokes, jokes. But what it was, it was just getting to know them and spending time with them and, you know, me starting to get to know their world and creating knowledge with them. That's why, I think sometimes, you know, work, research with children get disrespected. You know, they're not going to come with full blown quotes for you, you know, all the time. It's not like an interview, but you kind of have to kind of muddle through and find out what these different ways of communicating is actually saying. But I think that's the exciting part of research as well.

Alexis Hieu Truong  45:53  
There's really an aspect of kind of like the, well, as you've mentioned, like the messiness, or some elements that we're not exactly sure what, if it'll constitute, like – quote, unquote – good research. But hearing how, like, your whole journey, like the whole journey, and what you kind of developed, like you said, they might not give us like the quotes, but what you shared with us about Mystical, right, it really, it really spoke, I feel, to something deep. So I think that, yeah, it, it kind of really reminds us, I feel, not to be, to explore right, to be comfortable with the uneasiness and so on and, and to not be dismissive of things that might be labelled as poor knowledge or bad knowledge, and like these kinds of things, right? 

Brenda Herbert  46:39  
Yeah, or not important as well. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  46:43  
A lot of importance to the voice of children. We're actually all out of time and I have so much to think about from today, so you'll probably be glad to know that we're not going to talk about that TV show, Adolescence. It's been done enough. But, yeah, we've had such a great time talking with you. You spoke just now about not knowing, well, we now know a lot more. So thank you very much, Brenda.

Rosie Hancock  47:11  
Thanks, Brenda. 

Brenda Herbert  47:12  
Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. 

Rosie Hancock  47:19  
You were listening to Brenda Herbert talking about childhood. We're having our break in August, so we'll be back with you in September. In the meantime, check out our archive or our new mini series. It's called Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-racism, and it's three audio essays from three brilliant guests on three landmark activists and how their ideas and work speak to sociology. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  47:42  
Our producer was Alice Bloch, and our sound engineer is Dave Crackles. Thanks for listening. Bye.