Childhood, with Brenda Herbert

How do stereotypes of “the child” contribute to injustice? Why must we decolonise childhood? What can it mean to work with love, rather than just study it? And how can we think about children’s agency? Sociologist and counsellor Brenda Herbert, the Sociological Review Fellow for 2024-25, reflects on her in-depth research getting to know children who had experienced domestic abuse and social work intervention in London. Applying a “live methods” approach – working with photography, play, and simply hanging out – she looked beyond the typical trauma and social work gaze to create knowledge with them about what mattered to them in their everyday lives.

Inspired by Erica Burman’s “Child as Method” and by Franz Fanon, Brenda reflects on how powerful notions of “the child” can serve to prop up the status quo – from the treatment of refugees, to how children’s views are handled in family courts. Meanwhile, children who don’t fit our expectations of what a child should be risk being treated differently and pathologised.

A heartfelt and rallying conversation, also describing the distinct joys and the challenges of doing research with children. Reflecting on social work, agency, power, and decolonial and black feminist thought, including Brenda’s “first academic love”: bell hooks.

Guest: Brenda Herbert; Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardner; Artwork: Erin Aniker

Find more about Uncommon Sense

Episode Resources

By Brenda Herbert

• The Everyday Lives of Children Who Have Experienced Domestic Abuse: Looking Beyond the Trauma Lens – forthcoming
• What’s love got to do with it? Live methods and researching with children who have experienced domestic abuse and social work intervention – 2025
• Cupboard love: Is tidiness essential for good parenting? – 2023

From the Sociological Review Foundation

• Palestine: A Sociological Issue
• Live Methods
• Joy, with Akwugo Emejulu
• The Sociological Review Fellowship 2024-25: meet our winner

Further resources

• “The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis”  – eds. Lynn Chancer, John Andrews
• Hortense Spillers in conversation with Gail Lewis (ICA, London, 2018)
• “Child as Method” – Erica Burman
• “All About Love” – bell hooks
• “The Selected Works of Audre Lorde” – ed. Roxane Gay
• “The Creative Spirit and Children’s Literature” – June Jordan, in “Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines” – eds. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, Mai'a Williams

Read more about Hortense Spillers, Gail Lewis and Franz Fanon. Plus: the concept of epistemic injustice.

Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-sense