IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/chinre/v12y2019i4d10.1007_s12187-018-9579-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contested Agency of Young Carers Within Generational Order: Older Daughters and Sibling Care in Istanbul

Author

Listed:
  • Başak Akkan

    (Bogaziçi University Social Policy Forum
    Utrecht University)

Abstract

Residing on an empirical study carried out in Istanbul with young female carers (daughters who share the care responsibility of their younger siblings with their mothers), this article explores the care provider positioning of a child by contemplating the dilemma of empowerment/vulnerability in relation to generational order and relational agency of the child. The care responsibility within the course of childhood locates a particular intergenerational experience. Understanding this experience from the standpoint of children contributes to the conceptualisation of childhood as a contested, yet relational space of interdependencies along the generational order. The study demonstrates that sharing the caring responsibility of a family member brings both empowerment and vulnerability for young carers that is negotiated within the entangled boundaries of the childhood and adulthood. The emerging themes pertaining to the empowering features of caring duties are solidarity between the mother and older daughter being/feeling capable of doing things without being supervised by an adult whereas the emerging themes pertaining to vulnerability are physical and emotional (anxiety) burdens of caring for younger sibling and the difficulty older daughter's have in balancing their own needs against their siblings' needs. The narratives of young female carers reveal the solidaristic as well as the conflicting features of the intergenerational relations (childhood in relation to adulthood) along the lines of empowerment and vulnerability that problematizes the interdependencies and agency of the child within the generational order.

Suggested Citation

  • Başak Akkan, 2019. "Contested Agency of Young Carers Within Generational Order: Older Daughters and Sibling Care in Istanbul," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 12(4), pages 1435-1447, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:chinre:v:12:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s12187-018-9579-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-018-9579-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-018-9579-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12187-018-9579-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Makhtoom Ahmed & Imran Sabir & Muhammad Zaman, 2022. "Children’s Perceptions of their Safety and Agency in Pakistan," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(3), pages 959-987, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:chinre:v:12:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s12187-018-9579-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.