Hayley Davies

Childhood 2012 19 (1): 8-23

Affinities, Seeing and Feeling Like-Family:

Exploring why Children Value Face-to-Face Contact

Abstract

This article examines face-to-face contact as a way in which children practise, imagine and

constitute their closest relationships. Based on the findings of a qualitative school-based study,

the article shows that children regard 'seeing' as a family and relational practice which enables

them to feel connected to, and develop affinities with others. The article traces the interplay of

given, negotiated and created, and sensory affinities in children’s family and kin relationships.

Face-to-face contact is explored as a context in which children gain knowledge of others, and

develop intimate, 'family-like' relationships.

Keywords
Affinities, children, families, intimacy, kinship

Introduction

This article explores how face-to-face contact or ‘seeing’ is implicated in children's constitution

of family, kinship and other relationships. Drawing on empirical research, I will show that face-

to-face contact is one way in which children experience and imagine family and kinship in a

manner which is suggestive of the given, negotiated and created, and sensory forms of affinity

that Mason (2008) argues (in part) comprise kinship.

Face-to-face contact or seeing implies the visual dimensions of relationships yet, I suggest its

meaning is multidimensional. Throughout the article I use seeing and face-to-face contact

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interchangeably but I suggest that face-to-face contact is analytically useful for examining the

non-visual sensory dimensions of children's interaction. Face-to-face contact provides an

opportunity for social interaction, spending time together and sharing in both everyday and

special family activities, which allow for, but do not guarantee, the development of close

relationships. Face-to-face contact encapsulates both the practical and symbolic elements of

family life. Seeking a child’s perspective on the nature of face-to-face contact as a family (and

relational) practice, I will illuminate why children value face-to-face contact as a way of

practicing and imagining family and kin relationships. Whilst this article also attends to

children’s friendships, children emphasised an expectation to see family which was distinctive

from their expectations of friendship.

An existing study of the creative and negotiated character of children's constitution of kinship

shows face-to-face encounters provided a context for children’s shared ‘biographies’, which

enabled them to make sense of and creatively constitute their kin relationships, interpret and

assign kin-like- relationships (Mason and Tipper, 2008b: 455). Face-to-face encounters were

constructed as 'highly significant in children's kinship experiences' (Mason and Tipper, 2008a,

141). Aside from the latter research, and allusions to the importance of face-to-face contact for

children (Morrow, 1998; Smart et al., 2001; Edwards et al., 2006), the insights offered by an

analysis of face-to-face contact have remained, until recently, unexplored. This article aims to

address this gap.

Philosophical work suggests that face-to-face contact offers a way of knowing others that cannot

be captured in mere description (Merleau-Ponty, 2004). Social interaction comprises observations

of facial expressions, body language, tactility, demeanour, tone of voice and silences (Goffman,
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1982; Urry, 2003). Urry devised the concept of co-presence to describe face-to-face and body-to-

body encounters, characterised by ‘physical proximity’, interpretation of social interaction and

‘emotional work’ and allowing for the development of trust, intimacy, connection and

commitment (2003: 163-4). In his view, face-to-face and ‘body-to-body’ ‘co-presence’ are

brought about by social and familial obligations and normative expectations of contact (Urry,

2003: 163).

The negotiation of inter-generational transnational family relationships is a good example of how

familial obligations, such as acts of care require face-to-face rather than virtual contact

(Baldassar, 2007a; Baldassar, 2007b: 389). The ‘need to “hear” and to “see” each other’ is valued

both on special occasions and during a ‘crisis’ (Baldassar, 2007b: 390-391; 399). Furthermore,

‘literally see(ing)’ one’s geographically distant relatives allows for the development of ‘mutual

and shared knowledge’ of one another ‘vital for really ‘‘knowing’’’ them (Mason: 2004: 424-5).

For British-born Bangladeshi children, visiting, as well as talking to relatives on the telephone,

were key strategies used to maintain family ties (Mand, 2010). Whilst children reported telephone

contact as the most ‘common way...(of) keeping in touch with grandmas, granddads, aunts and

uncles in Bangladesh’, it was also challenging for them because of the lack of ‘common

referents’ children shared with their relatives (Mand, 2010: 281). Nonetheless, visits to family

members abroad and regular telephone calls constitute a ‘display’ to family members and to

‘relevant others’ of the importance attached to these relationships (Finch, 2007: 66).

Whilst these studies prove face-to-face contact is not exclusively constitutive of family and kin

ties, they highlight the meaning embedded in face-to-face interactions as a characteristic of

family and kinship. They provoke inquiry into whether face-to-face contact may be more
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important in family and kin relationships mediated by social expectations and cultural norms

about the emotional connections, trust, commitment and intimacy that should characterise family.

By attending to the moral and normative dimensions of children’s conceptualisations of family, it

is possible to better understand the role of face-to-face contact in these relationships.

Face-to-face contact is shown to be meaningful to children’s family and kin interactions.

Children’s accounts emphasise relatives’ ‘appearances, bodies, voices, smells’ and practices

including ‘hugging, laughing, tickling, using funny voices, shouting, smacking’ which hint at

what children view as distinctive to kinship (Mason and Tipper, 2008b: 145). During this contact,

children experience, and observe interactions with and between kin, gaining ‘sensory and

experiential' knowledge of these people (Mason and Tipper, 2008a: 147). I suggest that this

‘sensory and experiential’ knowledge of family members is part of the practising of intimacy.

Intimacy has been described as ‘practices of close association, familiarity and privileged

knowledge’ (Jamieson, 2005: 189) as well as the ordinary practices of love, practical care and

interdependence (Jamieson, 1998: 174). Not everyone who participates in these practices and

interactions may be considered by children as ‘intimate’ or emotionally close, which makes it

valuable to identify the conditions that make possible a sense of intimacy in children’s

relationships.

Seeking to develop understandings of how kinship is ‘imagined’ and ‘practised’ Mason has

outlined four dimensions of affinity (2008: 32). Fixed, negotiated and creative, ethereal, and

sensory forms of affinity provide a sociological tool for interrogating what family and kinship

involve (Mason, 2008). A fixed affinity is a connection that is ‘regarded as or feels, fixed’ and

encompasses those relationships that are not ‘chosen’ (Mason, 2008: 33). Negotiated and creative

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affinities ‘run alongside and intersect with fixity' (Mason, 2008: 36). Commitments negotiated

over time may gain a feeling of fixity similar to that experienced in more formal family or kin

relationships. Ethereal affinities encompass experiences which are ‘mysterious, magical, psychic,

metaphysical, spiritual and...ethereal – matters that are considered beyond (rational) explanation’

(Mason, 2008: 37). A sensory affinity refers to connections between bodies, or connections of a

physical, material or sensory nature experienced by kin (Mason, 2008: 40). This encompasses the

types of connections made through physical or bodily interaction or responses to facial

expressions, tone of voice, as described previously in children’s kinship experiences (Mason and

Tipper, 2008a, 2008b). I will elaborate how children express their family and kin relationships in

terms of these affinities, and through examining face-to-face contact, will further expose how ‘the

sensory is implicated in relationships’ (Mason, 2008: 40).

In most European countries, children’s contact with parents, siblings and grandparents is

constructed as an important family practice and an expected feature of family life. Legal

provisions are made to ensure children’s contact with biological parents (in Norway, Moxnes,

2003), and grandparents’ contact with grandchildren (in Germany, Italy, and the US, Ferguson et

al., 2004). In the UK, a Green paper (DCSF, 2010: 38) proposed to confer a legal right upon

grandparents to have contact with their grandchildren following separation and divorce, a right

that the current coalition government have in principle upheld. Furthermore, the United Nations

Convention on the Rights of the Child has declared that ‘States Parties shall ensure that a child

shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will’, unless it is perceived to be in the

child’s best interests (UNCRC, 1989). Enshrined in children’s rights and in legislation, children’s

contact with certain family members might feel or be experienced by children as a fixed element

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of those family relationships. These provisions are predicated on moral and normative

assumptions that children’s contact with family members is in their ‘best interests’.

Both the rights framework and legislation neglect to attend to the generational power structures

of children’s social relationships, and the underpinning social, structural and material conditions

which make possible or impede children’s ability to achieve or refuse contact with family

members (Alanen, 1998). These understandings of contact as being in children’s best interests

form the social and cultural context in which this study of children’s constitution of family and

close relationships is undertaken. An analysis of face-to-face contact provides a context to

examine the fixed or negotiated character of children’s family and kin relationships. Given the

fluidity of family life the meaning attributed to face-to-face contact may be shifting and the role

of face-to-face contact in constituting contemporary children’s family relationships requires

further consideration.

On a related note, Finch has asked: ‘what forms of direct social interaction are used to convey the

meaning that this is a ‘family-like’ relationship? What, for example, is the relative importance of

face-to-face interaction, and other forms such as telephone calls, emails or text messages?’

(Finch, 2007: 75). Finch’s questions pose an important line of inquiry in children’s relationships

also. Given children’s ‘digital literacy’ (Drotner, 2005: 42) and sophisticated understanding of

technologically mediated communication (Holloway and Valentine, 2003; Rheingold, 2002), we

might expect them to favour the use of text, email and web cameras. Young people do prefer to

use text messages to communicate with parents over ‘sensitive issues’ (Devitt and Roker, 2009:

198). These new forms of communication may be used, as adults use them, to ‘supplement’

rather than replace more traditional forms of communication such as letters and photographs
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(Baldassar, 2007b: 401). Our understanding of the relative importance children attach to various

types of communication and the types of communication that characterise ‘family-like’

interaction remain impoverished.

The Study and Methods

This article is based on accounts generated for an ESRC-funded study entitled ‘Constituting

Family: Children’s Normative Expectations and Lived Experiences of Close Relationships’

(2006-2007). This qualitative school-based study was located in a Midlands state-primary school

(UK) with approximately 130 pupils. It involved twenty-four girls and boys aged 8-10, twenty of

whom were white British and four were British South Asian. Sixteen of these children had

experienced some family fluidity, either through parental separation, divorce, bereavement, or

parental conflict with other kin members; of whom, thirteen had experienced a parent re-

partnering; eleven had acquired new half, and/or step-siblings; and fifteen had a non-resident

sibling or parent.

The majority of the children's families had resided in or around the town of current residence and

had relatives living locally. Seven children had family members living abroad, four of whom had

many family members abroad. Family members living locally did not ensure that children shared

frequent contact with them. Many of the children’s material circumstances shaped their

opportunities for contact; the school and the majority of children’s homes were located in the

bottom third of the most deprived areas in England. Nine of the twenty-two families did not own

a car which restricted the number of visits children made to family members, as did the cost of

public transport. These broader socio-economic contexts mediated children’s experiences of

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social (Ridge, 2002) and family life (Moxnes, 2003; Haugen, 2005) and the children’s

perceptions of proximity and access to family members.

The children were invited to participate in the research through an information leaflet for children

and parents that explained the research (Davies, 2008). A reply slip formed part of the leaflet and

parents/guardians were asked to provide or refuse consent for their children's participation.

Children's informed consent, or refusal to participate, was negotiated through ongoing discussion,

and through addressing children’s questions about the research, particularly prior to recording

research activities.

Methods for generating data included: participant observation in school 1-2 days per week over a

period of eighteen months; informal semi-structured paired interviews focusing on the meaning

of family and close relationships; children’s family drawings and accompanying discussions of

who they considered as ‘family’; visits to six of the children’s family homes where I was shown

photographs and other important family mementos; the production of family books, a record of

children’s significant family and relational experiences, memories and stories (similar to

Thomson and Holland’s memory books, 2003).

Seeing: a Family Practice

The children’s accounts were full of normative expectations and comparisons of the type,

frequency, longevity of contact and the consequent familiarity and quality of relationships they

shared in a range of relationships. The children assessed to whom they felt close and classified

their relationships based on knowledge most often accumulated through face-to-face contact; it

facilitated children’s ongoing and reflexive process of working out who they valued as family.

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The emphasis children placed on seeing family highlighted its importance in conducting these

relationships and, I argue, as a key family (and relational) practice. These children shared a

cultural expectation that seeing and talking to family members was part of the meaning of family

and that close genealogical relatives would share these forms of contact.

It is through face-to-face contact that children claimed they were able to develop and practice

their close relationships. Seeing was considered an important part of enacting a relationship and

enabled children to spend time, know, talk to, observe changes in appearance and interact with

family members. The children used seeing as a colloquial term for practicing their close

relationships and it was regarded as an integral element of a relationship, as expressed by Kayla 1

who defined family as ‘the people I always see’ (Kayla, interview). I use this excerpt to show the

centrality of ‘seeing’ to children’s definitions of family, their construction of seeing as a quality

associated with 'family' relationships, a way of relating to and connecting with others. I do not

imply that everyone who Kayla sees often counts as family. Neither do I suggest that only

relationships characterised by face-to-face contact are meaningful as family relationships;

examples from research with children experiencing bereavement show this not to be the case

(Ribbens-McCarthy, 2006).

One classification children applied in their relationships was distinguishing between family

whom they saw regularly and those they seldom saw, as Hannah does in her family drawing.

Hannah asked me:

Hannah: Can we draw a side for people we see and a side for people we don’t?

Hayley: Yeah.
1
All of the children's names used in this article are pseudonyms.

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Hannah: I’m drawing my dad right over here because I never see him. (Notes on

Drawings).

This is a brief extract from Hannah's ongoing narrative about her troubling relationship with her

father. Hannah’s distinction between family she does and does not see is a reference to her

limited contact with her father. Whilst Hannah had intended to draw her father, she later decided

not to include him in her family drawing. Hannah’s extract reveals her actively negotiating her

constitution of family; on the one hand recognising the ‘given’ or fixed affinity she shared with

her father through their biological relationship, the visible manifestation of this for Hannah was

their shared surname, which verified to others their family connection. On the other hand, the

opportunity to represent her family permitted some creativity and scope for negotiating who and

what constituted family.

Face-to-face contact was used as a way of distinguishing emotionally close from less close family

members. For example, when children had infrequent or no face-to-face contact with half-

siblings, they demonstrated creative license in their constitution of family. Some children omitted

siblings from family drawings explaining that they were not close, or not family. This is apparent

in my conversation with Oliver:

Hayley: Are you going to put your brother in Oliver?

Oliver: No. I won’t put my other sister in either, it’s just I don’t see my brother.

(Discussing his half-siblings, Notes on Drawings).

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Seeing was an important family practice and central to children’s constitution of family.

Children’s differentiations, in both positive and negative ways, between their non-resident and

resident or nearby siblings encapsulated some children’s ambivalence about siblings whom they

saw infrequently.

Nathalie is Tanya’s younger half-sister from her mother’s subsequent relationship and Eli is

Tanya’s older half-sister from her father’s previous relationship. Tanya had last seen Eli three

months before our discussion, but shared regular contact with Nathalie, who lived a short

distance away from Tanya.

Tanya: I love my mum and Nathalie. I love my family loads, except Eli ‘cause I never see

her.

Hayley: So you don’t love her because you don’t see her?

Tanya: I do love her but I don’t see her. (Interview).

Routine contact and ‘shared biographical’ experiences with resident siblings (relative to limited

contact with non-resident siblings) gave fixity to sibling relationships, which non-resident sibling

relationships did not possess.

While children recognised differences in the quality and closeness of relationships according to

the degree of contact, siblings were not held accountable for this lack of contact, as parents or

grandparents might be. Children’s discussions imply a shared understanding that developing

close relationships with their non-resident parents and siblings would ideally, be based upon face-

to-face contact. This illuminates the moral and normative expectations children have about
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sharing contact with their family members. Some children discussed relying on and holding

accountable a parent or step-parent for facilitating or failing to facilitate contact with half- or

step-siblings. Children acknowledged their own and their siblings’ relational position as children,

and their limited agency to negotiate contact. Children recognized that their agency to contribute

to decisions about with whom they would live or share contact was contingent on their age; many

had engaged in discussions with parents about at what age they could make important choices.

A lack of contact with certain family members culminated in some children attributing increased

value to these relationships. Below, Bridget discusses her siblings from her father’s previous

relationship, whom she has never met. Bridget’s account is an example of some children's

longing to see, and feeling of loss at not being able to maintain or make contact with close family

members.

Sometimes when I think of my brother and sister who I’ve never seen it makes me feel

quite sad ‘cause I’ve never ever seen them (Interview).

In such cases, children suggested that the quality of parents’ post-separation/divorce relationships

played a role in whether children saw their half- and step-siblings. Children's conceptualisations

of family rested upon complex assessments of their expectations of how often they should and

did see family members, the perceived agency of those family members in instigating contact,

and the quality contact shared.

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Knowing Family: Contact in Children’s Relationship Trajectories

Face-to-face contact was reflected upon in the broader temporal context of children’s relationship

trajectories. All participating children agreed that longstanding, current or past face-to-face

contact were important factors influencing their emotional closeness to and knowledge of their

family members. Some close relationships were established across time with children sharing

contact with individuals once weekly or less frequently. Regular face-to-face contact in the past

was regarded similarly to routine current contact as an opportunity to develop intimate and

everyday knowledge of family members, and was important in children’s assessments of who

they ‘knew best’ in their families. Oliver said:

Oliver: I know best my mum, my dad and my sister because I see them every day. My

gran would be the next one because I see her every week or every two weeks.

Hayley: So how well you know them depends on how often you see them does it?

Oliver: Yeah. I know my dad, mum and sister very well. (Interview)

Bridget was co-parented, seeing her parents for equal amounts of time each week. Bridget said in

response to my question of who she ‘knew best’:

Probably my mum, ‘cause my dad, I started seeing him when I was about five and I’ve

been with my mum all my life (Interview).

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The children’s accounts suggest that family did not comprise those with whom children currently

spent most of their time; family time together accrued, and the passing of time represented the

accumulation of both mundane and special intimate knowledge which was constitutive of family.

Hayley: Who in your family do you know the best?

James: My mum and my dad. I see my mum most of the time and my dad because I know

him quite well from all those days I used to see him.

Catherine: I know best my mum, my dad, my step-dad, and my step-mum, I know quite a lot.

(Interview).

Catherine has ascribed her step-parents with the status of family; her in-depth knowledge of them

was expressed as a fixed affinity, based on the regularities of routine family life. This ‘family-

like’ knowledge built upon over time, permitted children to feel as if these relationships had a

similar basis to ‘given’ biological or legal family connections.

Seeing was not only a family practice which allowed children to know family members, it was

also part of children’s vocabulary which indicated that they were sharing a relationship with

someone. For the children in this study, face-to-face contact was an important part of enacting a

family relationship and was desirable for facilitating and securing knowledge of family members.

Seeing and a Hierarchy of Sensory Contact

Children regarded face-to-face contact as superior relative to telephone calls, letters or email

contact; the absence of face-to-face contact was often regarded as an impediment to developing a

close relationship with someone. Below are explanations of how face-to-face contact allowed the
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children to develop knowledge of people. Whilst not all of these extracts are specific to family

relationships, they offer important insights into face-to-face contact in children’s social

interactions, which aid an understanding of family relationships. Leena explains:

You can tell when you look at their face, you know what they’re like. I’m talking about

personality and how people act and that, you know what they’re like if you look at their

face. (Interview).

Bridget and Cara consider the relative value of face-to-face and telephone contact:

Bridget: I see my nan and granddad sometimes and I talk to them on the phone at my

dad’s house when I get there.

Hayley: Is that the best way of keeping in touch with people?

Bridget: It’s nice to get to know your family by like seeing them, by talking to them.

Hayley: How do you get to know people better by seeing them?

Bridget: By the looks of people you know what their personality is like.

Cara: Yeah, because then you know if they look nasty or anything but I’d rather talk to

people over the phone because um, you’d be less nervous when you meet them.

You wouldn’t be shy or anything. (Interview).

James and Catherine are discussing ways of knowing and developing relationships with friends:

Hayley: How do you get to know people?

James: Sometimes if you know them at school, on holiday, you know them by someone

that your mum knows and they have a child and you get to know them like that.
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Hayley: And if you spend time together do you get to know them better?

Catherine: Ummm.

James: Yes, you do.

Catherine: I spend a lot of time with my friend Daisy.

Hayley: What about if you talk to them on the phone, do you get to know them as well

then?

James: Not as much.

Catherine: No, not as much.

Hayley: Not as much as what?

Catherine: Seeing them is better than just speaking to them.

Hayley: Why’s that?

James: You get to see all of their facial effects. What they’re like, what they look like,

hair colour.

Catherine: Harriet’s friend Bridget is coming round to our house today.

James: To sleep and play.

Hayley: And what will you do tonight?

Catherine: Just play there ‘cause that’s what people do when their friends come round. And

that’s how you get to know them better.

James: And if you know them really, really well you can ask them to sleep or come round

for a while to eat. You can chat when you eat. (Interview).

These are examples of a prominent theme in my data, that children were reflexive about the

process and value of seeing as a form of relating to, engaging with, and getting to know people;

in short, developing affinities with people. Face-to-face contact allowed for a multi-sensorial
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experience, which permitted children to develop subjective and objective knowledge of people, to

‘look at their face’, interpret ‘facial effects’, see ‘what they look like’, assess ‘how they act’, and

their overall ‘personality’. In grappling to explain what she means, Leena hints at occasions when

we meet people and we just ‘know what they’re like’, describing a visceral, intuitive or if broadly

conceived, an ethereal affinity with a person.

Face-to-face contact is characterised by conversation and children commented on family

members’ tones of voice, which contributed to creating a profile of a person’s character. Seeing

and experiencing someone face-to-face was a way of exposing who they were and what they

were like. Leena, James and Catherine discuss face-to-face contact as an opportunity for them to

observe, assess and know a person. Cara and Bridget recognise face-to-face contact as an

interactive, engaging, mutual sensory experience which also exposes the child to the person they

are meeting, opening up the child’s behaviour to interpretation and assessment also.

As James and Catherine reveal, the type of contact and interaction children expected to share

with people varied according to the stage of their relationship, recognising the fluidity of

relationships across time. These accounts point to a hierarchy of sensory contact with face-to-face

contact and verbal communication considered as fundamentally important in conducting

relationships. Face-to-face contact was not only a way of developing a closer relationship, but the

type of interaction that characterized such contact could provide some indication of the closeness

of that relationship.

In comparing the quality of her relationships with her two granddads, Laura drew my attention to

proximity and distance as mediating factors in children’s family interaction. When asked who in
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her family she knew the least, Laura who had never met her granddad Jim who lived in Ottawa

responded:

Granddad Timothy, aunty Carol and granddad Jim. Actually, I do know my aunty Carol the

best even though my aunty Carol is in Sweden. I don’t know my granddad Timothy the best

because he never comes round really. My granddad Jim is in Ottawa, even though I don’t

know him that well ‘cause I never really saw him, I just speak to him on the phone at my

dad’s. And, I know one Christmas present that he’d really like is for him to go over to

England or us to go over to Ottawa to see him. (Interview).

Laura’s account suggests that face-to-face contact is the optimal (although not the only) way in

which ‘family-like’ interaction, ‘family-like’ knowledge, and affinities with family members are

achieved. Face-to-face contact was desirable and necessary to know family members well;

telephone contact did not compare in these respects.

Laura’s assessment of the quality of her relationships with her two granddads demonstrates a

sophisticated understanding of the factors facilitating and inhibiting contact with them. Granddad

Timothy’s close geographical proximity meant he was able, but chose not to have contact with

Laura and her family. However, the considerable geographical distance between herself and her

granddad Jim acted as a real and legitimate barrier to seeing him. Granddad Timothy was failing

to see her and was therefore not acting in a ‘family-like’ way. Laura expressed that there was a

mutual understanding that granddad Jim would like to see her and her family, and this desire

‘displayed’ to Laura that he regarded her and her family as important and part of his kin group.

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Knowing Appearances: Developing Intimate Knowledge?

Face-to-face contact allowed children to gain and maintain corporal knowledge of a person and

their character. Descriptions of appearances were central to children’s interview accounts and

their discussions during drawing sessions. Intimate knowledge of someone’s physical

appearance, developed through regular face-to-face contact characterized many close

relationships. Knowing someone and their body in such depth also allowed room for creativity,

for children to encompass that someone as family. Children were highly cognizant of bodies;

their relationships and affinities with family and kin were based in the sensory, the bodily and the

physical. This is not to suggest that intimate knowledge of someone, their body or appearance

only occurs in kinship or ensures a positive affinity with others.

While drawing her family Laura (see Figure 1) provided a commentary, informing me that she

would draw her father’s ‘lump’ (Adam’s apple), his ‘hairy arms’, her grandmother’s flip flops

which ‘she always wears’, and her grandfather’s ‘funny hair’. Laura said about her grandfather’s

hair ‘I can’t quite draw it, it sort of comes over like this’ (Notes on drawings, p.10). Laura like

many other children attended to her family members presentations of their selves. In their

drawings, the children discussed the details of family members’ appearances and presentation

including a step-father’s ‘handsome’ smile, a parent’s ‘work jumper’, a dad’s ‘big nose’ and a

brother’s ‘scowl’.

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Figure 1: Laura's Drawing

Laura’s ongoing and daily contact with all of these family members (with the exception of her

father), enabled her to observe, recall and record the regularities of their appearances. Children’s

drawings elicited the sensory nature of children’s relationships. Children suggested that their

family members were related to through their bodies, bodily features and clothing which they

characteristically wore. In discussing and representing these bodily features children

demonstrated family-like knowledge of those people. Children assumed, and thought it important

that they would know and could recall family members’ appearances. This assumption was

conveyed in Stephanie’s account of her like-family friend Sara. Stephanie deliberated over

whether to include Sara as family:

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Sara’s sort of family, well half of my family, she’s half my cousin, yeah she is family…but

I’ve forgotten what she looks like. I haven’t seen her for a long time…she’s not my family

like. (Notes on Drawings).

This extract exposes sensory knowledge of appearance as important to children’s constitution of

family and highlights the interpretive and creative nature of who counts as family. Practically

speaking, when children were unable to remember people’s appearances or had never seen family

members, they were unable to represent them in their drawings, calling into question the status of

such individuals as family members. In my conversations with children during field work, they

mentioned the difficulty of claiming someone as family if they had no knowledge of their

physical appearance.

Practising Family: Seeing and Speaking to Family Members

Seeing was a way of enacting a relationship and a highly valued form of contact for developing

affinities with family; it was a term in common parlance in children’s relationship vocabulary.

Children often mentioned ‘not seeing’, or ‘not talking/speaking to’ extended family members in

describing the deterioration or termination of parents’ relationships with those people.

Many of the children had extended kin living nearby whom they did not see because of intra-

family conflict, some of whom were consequently denied family status. Neil said ‘I don’t really

see my dad’s brother anymore’ (Family Books) and Catherine noted, ‘my mum don’t speak to her

dad any more’ (Interview). In a paired interview, Hannah and Laura discussed incidences which

had led to a breakdown in communication between a parent and a family member. Laura stated:

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Childhood 2012 19 (1): 8-23

Aunty Valerie, I just don’t see her any more ‘cause she accused my mum of nicking forty

pounds out of her purse. (Interview).

Tanisha considered that she and her cousin (referred to as ‘him’) were also implicated in the

‘break up’ between her parents and her aunt and uncle:

Tanisha: We’ve broken up really now so I don’t ever see him.

Hayley: What do you mean broken up?

Tanisha: Like our parents broke up.

Hayley: From his parents?

Tanisha: Yeah, my cousin’s parents and my parents broke up so I don’t get to see him

anymore. (Interview).

Children explained that family feuds were marked by the severing of contact. When relationships

‘broke up’ it was assumed that contact would discontinue, reinforcing face-to-face contact as an

important constituent of family-like relationships. Whilst these relationships were no longer

practiced, the fixity of these ties meant that they remained family relationships. Children did not

generally refuse to see or speak to family members but were indirect participants in family

conflict which diminished their ability to share contact with estranged kin. The children

understood how relationships were created and denied, and actively used these forms of

interaction in conducting their own close relationships, mainly with other children. In the below

extract Hannah is discussing a conversation with her estranged father, with whom Hannah’s

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Childhood 2012 19 (1): 8-23

mother shared an acrimonious relationship. Hannah’s father had upset her, and consequently, she

told him that she no longer wanted to speak to him and later regretted this.

I saw him and said, ‘sorry to say this but I really don’t want to talk to you’. And I really

wana see him but I can’t tell my mum ‘cause she’d just say ‘stop being silly’. (Interview).

Hannah’s statement offers an insight into the importance attached to ‘talking’ in close

relationships and the way in which Hannah was denying her father an important form of family

contact. This extract demonstrates how a child’s desire to see a family member can be quashed by

a resident parent who is relied upon to organise contact but, who may feel ambivalent about a

family member. It makes apparent that children’s constitution of family occurs within a relational

context where children’s parents’ relationships determine children’s relationships and contact.

Family-Like, Sensory and Intimate Relationships

This article has focused on face-to-face contact as a way in which children practise, imagine and

constitute their family relationships. It has explored the ways in which children’s accounts of

face-to-face contact express different forms of affinity with family and kin and has elicited the

intersections between sensory, negotiated and creative, and fixed affinities. It found face-to-face

contact as not only valuable in children’s relationships (Mason and Tipper, 2008a, 2008b) but

also embedded in their normative and moral understandings of what family and kin ought to do.

Face-to-face contact was constructed as a family practice; a form of interaction which

characterised family.

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Childhood 2012 19 (1): 8-23

Face-to-face contact permitted children to develop sensory affinities – a connection based in the

physical, bodily and sensory (Mason, 2008); it allowed for a multi-sensorial experience including

sharing time, talking, (often unconscious) observations of one another’s actions and interactions,

facial expressions, appearances, tone of voice and ‘displays’ of family. This interaction provided

a context for children to develop a holistic knowledge of a family member’s character and

appearance, knowledge which characterised many intimate family and kin relationships. An

examination of the sensory illuminates an avenue for exploring intimacy in children’s family and

kin relationships, an area of research which has been overlooked.

Children suggested that face-to-face contact as a form of interaction was most desirable for

facilitating and securing knowledge of family members; those shared experiences solidified

family-like relationships over time. Children who had in the past shared close relationships with

family members often expressed an ongoing emotional bond with that person which was based

on this previous, rather than current, shared contact. In a global world, not all children are able to

share face-to-face contact with family and will conduct relationships at a distance. As the

transnational literature shows, people maintain their family relationships in a number of creative,

practical and symbolic ways. Research needs to address the forms of contact that enable children

to maintain distant or transnational family relationships.

Whilst face-to-face contact was deemed a quality of family relationships and a way in which

close relationships are formed, the shared time and exposure to a person who was, or could be

considered family, did not always develop close family-like relationships. On the other hand, as

found by Mason and Tipper (2008b), non-family relationships characterised by closeness, and by

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Childhood 2012 19 (1): 8-23

family-like interaction over time, could become imbued with a fixity comparable to a given

family relationship.

Children’s moral and normative expectations that family members would share face-to-face

contact is a perspective which can be traced to predominant cultural discourses including: the

idealised ‘nuclear’ family form who live alongside one another sharing everyday contact; moral

and normative constructions of ‘absent’ parents who children see rarely, if ever; and a rights and

sociolegal discourse ensuring that parents and grandparents are able to maintain contact with

children and grandchildren respectively. These discourses reinforce the role of face-to-face

contact in already ‘given’ biological relationships and legal provisions to secure parental and

grandparental rights to contact with children serves to establish contact as a family practice.

These discourses lend another dimension of fixity to children’s biological relationships with these

family members. There is a need to further examine the implications of (face-to-face) contact

being constructed as a family practice within the UK, in particular, the emotional consequences

for children who do not share the contact that they may expect, and which is regarded as socially

and culturally appropriate.

The children in this study, aged 8-10, showed that they were relatively (although not completely)

unable to negotiate contact in their family relationships. The children had limited capacity to

make decisions, not only to organise contact, but also to avoid contact with family members or

shared residence with ‘family’ not of their choosing. Adult family members were predominantly

the engineers of family contact. Children’s positionality as children is of course temporal, and

children recognised and looked forward to a growing capacity to make and determine decisions

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Childhood 2012 19 (1): 8-23

within their families in the future, recognising the fluidity of relationships, the changing nature,

quality and frequency of contact in over time.

Children were able to exercise creativity in their representations of family to their friends, peers

and to me. The opportunity to discuss and draw ‘my family’ translated into a chance to discuss

the quality of their family relationships. A lack of face-to-face contact with some biological

relations permitted children creative license to discount those people as family, but despite this

creativity in their drawings, children also acknowledged in interviews, their given family

relationships which they or other people recognised as family relationships.

This article suggests that face-to-face contact is important to practising, imagining and

constituting family relationships. In response to Finch’s (2007) question about ‘what forms of

direct social interaction are used to convey the meaning that this is a ‘family-like’ relationship?’ I

suggest that face-to-face contact is a key way of conveying the family-like nature of

relationships. This examination of the role of face-to-face contact in the development of affinities

has shown how children’s affinities with others are socially and culturally produced as well as

generationally specific. These factors are likely to alter as children gain independence and are

better able to negotiate the terms and conditions of family contact. The ways in which social,

cultural and legal constructions of the family permeate children’s lived experiences of family and

kinship requires exploration.

Acknowledgements

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Childhood 2012 19 (1): 8-23

Thanks to Pia Christensen and Hannah Bradby for the encouragement and intellectual stimulation

which fuelled this work. I am also grateful to Anne-Marie-Kramer for her comments on an earlier

draft of this article, and to the ESRC for funding this research.

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Corresponding author:
Hayley Davies, Department of Education and Professional Studies, King’s College London,
Franklin Wilkins Building (Waterloo Bridge Wing), Waterloo Road, London SE1 9NH, UK.
Email: hayley.davies@kcl.ac.uk

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