Keywords

Introduction

Over the past decades, child poverty (re-)emerged as a major global problem. Worldwide more than one billion children live in a situation of poverty, having no adequate access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water. An estimated of 356 million children are forced to survive on less than $1.90 a day, the international measure for extreme poverty. Children are more than twice as likely to be extremely poor as adults (17.5% of children vs. 7.9% of adults) (Silwal et al., 2020). Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of children living in poverty has increased by 15%, representing a number that is expected to worsen as the pandemic continuous (Save the Children & UNICEF, 2020). In Europe, an estimated of 22.5% of children are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Compared with working-age adults (aged 18–64 years; 21.5%) and older people (aged 65 years and over; 18.6%), children have the highest risk of poverty or social exclusion. Generally, children growing up in a single-parent household, children whose parents have a low level of education or children with at least one parent with a migrant background have a higher risk of poverty or social exclusion (Eurostat, 2019). Growing up in poverty is commonly considered as a serious neglect of the realization of the rights of children. As Vandenhole (2013: 612) clearly states: ‘Child poverty is an affront to human dignity, and therefore seems to be blatantly in violation of the human rights of children’.

The connection between child poverty and children’s rights seems obvious, for a number of reasons. First, child poverty is thought of as a multidimensional problem, affecting almost all areas of children’s lives. It has an impact on children’s opportunities for equal access of material recourses such as education, health care, recreational activities, adequate food and housing. Moreover, it impacts the psychosocial development of children when confronted with stressful everyday living conditions or systematically having to deal with social exclusion or stigma (see e.g. Ridge, 2011; Morrow, 2010; Attree, 2006; Eamon, 2001). Only an integrated approach has sufficient leeway to deal with the multidimensionality of child poverty. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter: CRC) is considered as such a holistic framework (Vandenhole, 2013). Second, in all these live domains for children that are affected by child poverty, it is the state that is considered to have a primary obligation to guarantee access to basic resources. So, the state must provide material as well as immaterial resources such as housing, education and health care to guarantee an adequate standard of living for children (Morrow, 2010). More in particular, state parties to the CRC have the obligation to assist parents so they can fulfil their obligations towards their children. According to the CRC, the family is the best setting for a child’s development. States must take all necessary measures to assist parents in poverty to raise their children. Third, while poverty undermines the protection, provision and participation rights of children, strategies to combat child poverty might generally be associated with a childhood image of the vulnerable child, overemphasizing protection measures and at the same time underemphasizing participation measures (Vandenhole, 2013). Consequently, growing up in poverty impacts children’s representation as poverty limits children’s capabilities to be heard and to have their views taken into account on all matters affecting them (FRA, 2018; Ridge, 2006).

In this chapter, we further untangle the relationship between children’s rights and child poverty from the lens of representation. We argue that children growing up in poverty are represented differently than their parents living in poverty. A distinction that needs to be understood as the result of a particular interpretation of children’s rights. This distinction produces a dichotomy between the interest of children and those of parents. Paradoxically, this can in its turn have a negative impact on realizing children’s rights for children in poverty. In a first part of this chapter, we explain how we understand the connection between children’s rights and child poverty from a representational approach. From this understanding, we analyse the distinct position of children and parents in the context of poverty. In the next part, we substantiate our theoretical assumptions with empirical data coming from researching parents living and raising their children in poverty.

Child Poverty and Children’s Rights: A Representational Approach

Our representational lens on this issue of children’s rights and child poverty is for an important part inspired by the work of Nancy Fraser on social justice. We use this lens for a better understanding of the notion of the ‘childhood moratorium’, that is, the institutionalization of childhood in (Western) societies.

The Childhood Moratorium as the Political Domain for Representational Claims

Fraser (2005) defines social justice as ‘parity of participation’, consisting of three dimensions. The economic dimension is concerned with redistribution, that is, access to material as well as immaterial recourses that support people to participate as peers. Having lack of (im)material resources results in ‘distributive injustice or maldistribution’. The situation of children living in poverty, who do not have adequate access to education, health care, adequate food, housing and so on can be considered as a situation of distributive injustice or maldistribution (see e.g. Sarriera et al., 2015). The cultural dimension of social justice deals with recognition of status and enables people to interact on terms of parity. Not being recognized because of a person’s status can lead to ‘status inequality or misrecognition’. Children in poverty generally experience a twofold status inequality: not only are they confronted with the lack of recognition for the active role they play in society ‘as a child’; in addition, they have to face the experience of growing up as a ‘poor’ child who often needs to deal with disrespectful treatment (Lister, 2007). Consequently, child poverty has a severe impact on the citizenship-status of children (O’Brien & Salonen, 2011). The political dimension is concerned with the issue of representation and questions of membership. What is at stake here is being in or excluded from those entitled to make claims for social justice. With the words of Fraser: ‘The political in this sense furnishes the stage on which struggles over distribution and recognition are played out’. Establishing criteria of social belonging, and thus determining who counts as a member, the political dimension of justice specifies the reach of those other dimensions: it tells us who is included in, and who excluded from, the circle of those entitled to a just distribution and reciprocal recognition’ (Fraser, 2005: 75).

This third dimension of social justice as conceived by Fraser is of special importance if we wish to unravel the connection between children’s rights and child poverty. This is so, because the political stage for children is fundamentally different than the political stage for parents. As a result, claims for social justice in the context of poverty are particularly different for children than they are for parents. The political stage for children can be understood from what Zinnecker conceives as the ‘Bildungsmoratorium’ or ‘childhood moratorium’ (Zinnecker, 2000). Zinnecker used the concept of childhood moratorium to describe the nature of childhood in Western industrialized nations from the second half of the twentieth century. It implies a postponement or time-out for children from adult society and thus a withdrawal from certain responsibilities. Instead of participating in organized adult work, children are expected to engage in learning activities that prepare them to become future adult citizens (Sen, 2013). As Michael-Sebastian Honig (2008) explains, the childhood moratorium can be considered as ‘preparatory arenas that implement a principle of integration by means of separation’. The existence of the childhood moratorium goes along with specified institutions, spaces, times and discourses for children, as Zinnecker regards the moratorium as an ‘age-specific habitus’ (Sen, 2013). Over time, the contours of this childhood moratorium changed. A twin process of antagonistic developments can be observed in relation to this childhood moratorium. On the one hand a process of ‘blurring boundaries’ occurred whereby the distinction between the world of children and the world of adults is fading out. As a consequence, children can increasingly participate in the adult world. On the other hand, a process of ‘strengthened boundaries’ arose with childhood domains becoming further separated from the adult world (for further background see Reynaert & Roose, 2014, 2015).

All taken together, the childhood moratorium as the socio-cultural structuring and institutionalization of childhood in Western societies today still shapes the boundaries of the political arena for children. It is the playing field wherein claims for social justice for children are expressed. The childhood moratorium creates a distinction between children and adults where minors are considered as a member of the childhood moratorium and adults are not. Because children are represented differently in society than adults in claims for social justice, they also have a different position in the fight against poverty. In the next session, we explore these different representations of children and parents in relation to the issue of child poverty.

Representational Claims in the Childhood Moratorium: Differences Between Children and Parents

In the fight against child poverty, a distinction is made between the position of children and the position of parents. Strategies to combat child poverty are focused on the living conditions of children as a member of the childhood moratorium. Supportive measures for children living in poverty are located in childhood institutions such as education, childcare, parenting support, youth work and youth care, that is, in those domains of social life that focus almost exclusively on children (Reynaert & Roose, 2016). This is so because the rationality of the childhood moratorium represents children in a two-folded way. First, children are often represented as the victims of poverty (Roets et al., 2013). Children are not thought of as having any responsibility whatsoever for their situation of poverty. On the contrary: a discourse of compassion with children enables a large social mobilization to combat child poverty. So children are represented as the ‘deserving’ poor’ who merit receiving supportive measures to deal with their poverty situation (Sandbæk, 2017). Second, children are represented as future social and economic capital of society (Lister, 2003) and therefore deserve support. In the context of child policies aiming at implementing social investment strategies (Sandbæk, 2017; Kjørholt, 2013), children are thought of as ‘investment goods’ for future inclusion and success (Olk & Hübenthal, 2009; Lister, 2004).

The way children are represented as the deserving poor contrasts sharply with how parents are represented. Parents are not considered as members of the political arena of the childhood moratorium and therefore are not represented as victims of poverty. Parents are represented as the ‘undeserving poor’ who do not merit support for their poverty situation. They are not exempt from ‘guilt’. On the contrary: parents are being held responsible for the poverty situation in which their children grow up or they are held responsible for the lack of responsibility they take to escape poverty (Gillies, 2008). O’Brien and Salonen (2011) therefore conclude that for parents, there is a rather strong focus on responsibilities rather than on rights.

Two particular problems risk being the result of these different representations of children and parents living in poverty. First is the ‘pedagogization’ of the poverty problem’ (Reynaert & Roose, 2016). A strategy aiming at combating child poverty that is oriented almost exclusively on children, ignoring the living conditions of parents, risks narrowing down the problem of child poverty to an educational problem. Educational problems have their origins as well as their solutions in the womb of the childhood moratorium with interventions directed at children. However, the problem of child poverty is too complex to be locked up in the childhood moratorium. Child poverty is a multidimensional problem with multiple causes. It is not an isolated problem that could exist independently of the poverty situation of parents. In our societies, which are driven by market economies, poverty is primarily a problem of a lack of income (Mestrum, 2011). Since children are unable to earn an income, they are always intrinsically socio-economically dependent on their parents or adults in the household in which they are growing up (Lister, 2003, 2006). When parents deal with a lack of income and material resources, this has direct consequences for the situation of children. In this sense, child poverty should be seen as a product of the general poverty. Disconnecting the two issues could lead to the denial of the multidimensional nature of child poverty (Lister, 2006). Child poverty is indeed much more than creating opportunities in childcare or education. It is at least as much or even more a matter of labour market policy or housing policy, in other words policy areas that are located outside the childhood moratorium. Combatting child poverty with the childhood moratorium as reference point, focusing almost exclusively on children and losing out of sight the position of parents, risks ignoring the structural causes of poverty (Sandbæk, 2017; Featherstone et al., 2011).

Second is the dynamic of social control of parents living in poverty. Parents who are represented as responsible and thus accountable for their alleged lack of parental responsibility in raising their children in poverty risk ending up as objects in measures of social control. Policy measures targeting parents living in poverty are often focused on facilitating parents to entering the workforce and promoting active citizenship behaviour. However, these kinds of measures often strongly emphasize particular parental behaviour and expect parents to accommodate to societal standards of ‘good parenthood’ (O’Brien & Salonen, 2011; Gillies, 2008). For parents, these kinds of measures are often perceived as a double punishment: there is not only the stigma of being a ‘poor parent’ living in inhumane circumstances; there is also the stigma of being treated as the ‘bad parent’ failing to educate his or her children properly.

With the lens of Fraser’s approach of representation, both these problems can be considered as ‘misrepresentation’. Parents are addressed in a negative way in relation to issues of child poverty. Claims for combatting parental poverty occur isolated from the childhood moratorium. And more important, anti-poverty policies for children risk becoming governing strategies towards parents in which a panoptic eye is turned on their expected behaviour (Van Haute et al., 2018). As a result, parents cannot ‘participate on a par’. This misrepresentation of parents in the public debate and discourses on child poverty risks also becoming part of the framework of children’s rights. As Sandbæk (2017) states: ‘Promoting children’s rights and supporting parents may seem easy to combine, but research indicates that there is a risk of giving priority to children without considering how to enable their parents to support them … Children may receive economic support to participate in activities, while their parents, living in deep poverty, receive no such benefits, and may be blamed for failing to meet the expected standards for their children’.

Researching Parental Perspectives on Child Poverty

Focusing on the childhood moratorium as the arena wherein claims for social justice for children in poverty are articulated highlights the political context or setting where the activity of representation is taking place (‘where?’). In addition, focusing on the distinct way children are represented in the childhood moratorium—as the deserving poor—in contrast to the representation of parents—the undeserving poor—reveals the discourse on child poverty (‘how?’). Besides the where and the how, Celis et al. (2008), in their conceptual framework for political representation, define two other questions: who? and why? Particularly the former is of interest for us, as the ‘who’ question is concerned with identifying those who speak up on behalf of children and child-related issues. Parallel with the re-emerging of child poverty as a social problem in the past decade, scientific research into child poverty has increasingly been uncovering children’s own perspectives and experiences of growing up in poverty (Bessell et al., 2020; Fernandez et al., 2015; Roets et al., 2013; Bourdillon & Boyden, 2011; Ridge & Saunders, 2009). What have been less portrayed in recent literature are the perspectives of parents living and raising their children in poverty (see e.g. La Placa & Corlyon, 2016; Ridge, 2009). In representational terms, this means that parents are—at least partly—excluded from having voice in the production of knowledge on child poverty. In its turn, this risks misrepresenting parents in the public discourse on the issue of child poverty. In this contribution, we therefore focus on parental perspectives on child poverty to further entangle the relationship between children’s rights and child poverty.

For the present study, 30 families living in a vulnerable situation in Sint-Niklaas, a Flemish town of approximately 80.000 inhabitants in the north of Belgium, were interviewed by a local institution for community development (SAAMO Oost-Vlaanderen). These interviews were part of the development of a local policy for combating child poverty. In order to overcome the dynamic of ‘pedagogization’ of the poverty problem’ where only topics related to the pedagogical arena of the childhood moratorium in combatting child poverty are at stake, the institution for community development used the framework of social rights as recognized in article 23 of the Belgian constitution. Article 23 contains the right to material well-being, the right to housing and a healthy living environment, the right to health, the right to cultural and social development, and the right to participation. These rights were complemented by the right to education as recognized in article 24 of the Belgian constitution.

Selected families were part of the service-user group of the institution for community development or of one of their partner organizations. In addition, snowball-sampling (Noy, 2008) was used. Families in poverty who participated in the study were asked whether they know other families in poverty. The only condition for participation in the study was having experience with raising children in the context of a poverty situation. Of the participating families, 14 were single parents, 12 ‘traditional’ families and 4 extended families. By family size, there were 8 families with 1 child, 7 families with 2 children, 6 families with 3 children, 3 families with 4 children, 5 families with 5 children and 1 family with 6 children. Of the 30 families, 5 were undocumented, 12 families with at least one person working part-time, 13 families receiving financial benefits from the government and 5 families without any income. Half of the families were involved in some form of debt mediation. With regard to the housing situation, there were 19 families who rented on the private rental market, 2 families who were owners, 8 families who make use of social housing and 1 person who was homeless at the time the interview took place. The participants consisted of 27 women and 9 men.

Most of the interviews took place at the homes of the families and were conducted by the second author. The interview guideline was structured according to the themes of the social rights of the constitution. The focus of the in-depth interviews was on exploring how social rights are realized in families in poverty and how the daily living conditions impact the situation of children. The recorded interviews were fully transcribed and thematically analysed by all the authors.

Based on a qualitative content analysis, we discuss in the next part the most important insights that emerged from the interviews. The focus is on the interaction between the interests of children and parents and the areas of tension that arise from these interests. The testimonies of parents often bring these tensions to life in a sharp way. First, we will examine the policy domains that are traditionally associated with the childhood moratorium. Second, we examine the policy areas of housing, health and material well-being.

Child Poverty: An Educational Issue?

Child Poverty and Leisure Time

The domain of leisure is an important feature of the childhood moratorium. According to article 31 of the CRC, participation in leisure, play, recreational activities and cultural and artistic life is a fundamental right of children. Participation in leisure activities is likewise considered as an essential aspect of the fight against poverty. For one reason because it is believed to be a lever for building social capital. Therefore, guiding children who grow up in poverty to leisure activities is a crucial aspect of an anti-poverty policy. Nevertheless, families in poverty often experience all kinds of barriers, hindering access to leisure time activities.

We have food, drinks, a roof over our heads and clothes. But in terms of leisure time, we are limited. Going to the movie theatre for example … I really can’t afford that.

Many families indicate that leisure time, even with financial support, takes a too big chunk out of the family budget, forcing them to prioritize more basic expenses. As a consequence, children in poverty often do not participate in formal organized leisure activities. However, families in poverty indicate that they frequently organize informal leisure activities themselves. This is an important point of attention because non-participation in formal organized leisure activities does not necessarily imply non-participation in leisure activities. Children in poverty often do participate in self-organized informal leisure activities that are meaningful for them. This should be acknowledged as valuable in itself because these activities produce critical terrains where children also develop social capital.

Although leisure is an important part of the childhood moratorium, its meaning cannot be fully understood without connecting it to the broader living environment in which children grow up. Many families indicate that the housing situation is often an obstacle for inviting friends at home and maintain social relationships with peers.

Yes, my children have a lot of friends, but they don’t come to our house. We live in bad housing conditions and our house is way too small. There is no place to play. We have one bedroom for three children. The room is filled with the three beds. My children sometimes play at others children’s home. I always tell my children: don’t ask friends to come home to play!

What parents’ stories show is that a typical child-related policy domain such as leisure obviously interconnects with domains outside of the childhood moratorium, such as family income or housing. This observation indicates that the rights and interests of children and those of parents in the context of child poverty are interwoven and that these interests cannot be considered separately.

Child Poverty and Parental Support

As mentioned before, an important discussion associated with the issue of narrowing down ‘poverty’ to ‘child poverty’ is related to the vulnerability of parents living in poverty to become object of social interventions that interfere in the relationship with their children. Parents in poverty often point to the critical importance of being recognized and respected as a parent (Attree, 2005). Interventions intended to be supportive for parents are not always perceived that way. This is so because these interventions are often focused on parental behaviour in raising their children rather than on the environmental causes of poverty. As a result, the context in which parents raise their children risks getting lost out of sight. Parents in the interviews explain that they want to be acknowledged as primarily responsible for upbringing their children. In order to realize this, they need parental support that is willing to look beyond the behavioural aspects in raising their children. What parents seek for is parental support that takes the effort to cooperate with other welfare organizations to realize structural change in the lives of parents in poverty. Yet, parents reveal that they do not always experience this support.

You know, I asked for a lot of help, but received only little. The juvenile court is mainly available for criminal offenses. The Youth Assistance Support Centre is difficult to reach and has to deal with long waiting lists, just like mental health care. School social work is confronted with a high work load and schools are too fast in judging my situation, even though they have never been to my place.

A major source of annoyance reported by families in poverty is the fact that organizations for parental support do not give answers to their questions or that they give a kind of support that was not asked for.

I received a letter from an organisation for parental support. I finally thought that they decided something that could help me. I opened the letter. It was saying that they had free tickets for a show of the feast of St. Nicholas and that I could pass by to pick up the tickets. Not only was I very angry about this letter. It made me sick to my stomach. I had to throw up. I was so shocked.… It touched me very deeply at that moment. I don’t know about other people, but when I am in deep trouble, having no food, I really don’t want to sit and watch a show of the feast of St. Nicholas and receiving some chocolates. This show, I couldn’t care less. My children will be distracted for 10 minutes, and afterwards, they are going to see all kinds of things that they want to buy. But I don’t have the money to buy that.

Just like leisure time, day care for children is an essential part of the childhood moratorium. But also just like leisure, day care is for an important part connected with other domains of social life of parents, like, for instance, the domain of labour. While organizations for parental support are expecting parents to participate in the labour market, this often conflicts with the support that is organized for children of working parents. Day care for children is not only expensive for parents in poverty. Parents also indicate the lack of places in day care centres with long waiting list as a result. In addition, day care centres are only open from 9 to 5, while parents in poverty, often having a poor job quality, have irregular working hours. All this complicates combining a job with raising children.

I worked in the H&M. I worked on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday with late shifts. There is no day care for my children at these moments. So I quit my job. I can not leave my children all the time home alone. There is no day care after 6PM. But the Public Employment Service does not take that into account. They suspended me for 6 weeks. So, you can not say that you can not do the job because of a lack of day care for my children. They don’t accept that.

Also the stories of parents in the domain of parental support show the interconnectedness of, for instance, child care with the domain of labour, and thus the impossibility to ‘lock up’ the problem of child poverty in the childhood moratorium.

Child Poverty and Education

Education is probably one of the most important levers in the fight against child poverty. The right to education is recognized as an essential child right in all major international children’s and human rights instruments (Kjørholt, 2013). A key aspect of the right to education is having access to education. Families in poverty testify that financial accessibility to education in particular is often a barrier. There are not only the direct costs related with attending school, such as buying books or other learning materials. Families are also faced with indirect school costs that often weigh heavily on the family budget, such as the costs of transport to attend parent-teacher conferences.

I recently went to the parent-teacher conference by train. 11 euros for train and bus. When I arrived at school, I was informed that the meeting has been cancelled. However, they had not notified me. That was a significant financial part from my weekly budget, for nothing. I was so angry … but then they expect you to remain polite and friendly.… They have absolutely no idea what this means to me.

In addition to the financial difficulties, parents in poverty often experience a narrowed view of their poverty situation. They describe how all too often their context of poverty is ignored and how certain problems are too quickly translated into parenting problems.

The speech therapist and the physiotherapist both diagnosed a delay in the developmental of my child. But if you live in poverty, they immediately think that this delay is caused by our poverty situation. They think it is because of a poor education or because of inadequate food that my children are delayed. While you can just as easily have such problems in a middle class family.

This dynamic of ‘pedagogization’ of the poverty problem also occurs when children are referred from regular education to the system of special education. The financial argument is often used in these situations because special education can offer extra support without redressing this to the parents.

I. and M. are both referred to special education. In the first year M. was in a regular school, but grammar and maths were difficult. In special education, there was extra support for free. Until the age of six, M. was in special education. Then, he wanted to go to regular education. But the Pupil Guidance Centre didn’t think that was a good idea. Then M. cried. I talked to him and explained him that it might be good to stay in special education, with smaller classes where they can support you and where you can get good marks, instead of bad marks in mainstream education.

Analysing our findings from the lens of representation, we can observe that where representational claims for combatting child poverty are articulated is critical for how these representational claims are articulated. When child poverty is mainly dealt with in the domains of the childhood moratorium, a structure characterized by educational frameworks, it is not surprising that mainly educational answers are sought to the problem of poverty. This is inherent to the educational environment in which the problem of poverty manifests itself. The phenomenon of ‘pedagogization’ of the poverty problem is distinctive for the way the childhood moratorium functions. This has a number of merits, in particular in the recognition that leisure, parenting support and education can be important levers in the fight against child poverty. However, as parents are excluded from the childhood moratorium, parental domains such housing, labour or material support are generally undervalued in the fight against child poverty. This is what we discuss in the next section.

Child Poverty: A Social Issue?

Child Poverty and Housing

While the previous part of the empirical data show that typical childhood domains who are established to take care of children’s interests cannot be considered without connecting them to the socio-economic position of parents, this is also true the other way around. Policy domains related to the position of parents have a noticeable impact on the position of children. This is, for instance, the case in the domain of housing. Despite the fact that the right to housing is anchored in national and international legislation, for families living in poverty it is often a major concern. This is particularly the case for households with many children.

At the time, both my son and my daughter lived with me. So basically, I needed a three bedroom apartment. However, this costs between 700–750 euros.… So I gave my daughter and son a bedroom and I slept here on the couch for a long time. I slept on my couch for many years.

In addition to the cost of housing, the quality of housing is generally experienced by parents as problematic. Growing up in poor housing conditions can have critical health consequences, due to inadequate sanitation or problems with moisture and mould. Poor housing quality also has an effect on the social and cultural development of children, for instance, due to a lack of space to play or do homework. The precarious housing quality of families in poverty often results in difficulties for children to develop and maintain social relations with their peers. Because of the limited space to play or due to embarrassment, children living in poverty don’t invite friends to play at their home.

My home can only be heated in the living room. That’s why my daughter’s friends can never come to play with us: it is too cold in her room for most of the year. And simply because of the state of our house. Very occasionally in summer time, she can play in the garden. An electric heater could be a solution, but that, I can not afford.

The right to housing is also about the living environment. The place where the house is located is important for families in poverty. It is not only the space where they develop relationships with others. It is also a place that increases their limited housing space. Especially with children playing, the housing environment is of key importance.

Things are starting to improve with the neighbours. But we are a bit limited in space because we only have a terrace of 20 square meter. The children are not allowed to play with the ball there, because it makes too much noise. ‘Cruella De Vil’ lives above us and she can’t stand children. She really hates them.

The stories of parents about their housing conditions show that their poverty situation, which is often the cause of a precarious living situation, has a major impact on the education and development of children. Furthermore, the topic of housing illustrates how parents almost systematically lock themselves away, trying to compensate the constraints that go together with living in poverty. We see similar mechanisms when it concerns the issue of health.

Child Poverty and Health

Families in poverty are facing increasing health inequalities, even though the right to health care is recognized as a fundamental right for everyone. Families in poverty often seem in a worse health condition while having reduced access to healthcare. Poverty affects health, while health problems also result in more poverty. Medical costs often weigh heavily for families.

Yes, my youngest should wear glasses. But it costs an immense amount of money. I haven’t even been to the ophthalmologist yet. It is scandalous.! That child should have glasses.

I had to stop speech therapy for the eldest because of lack of finances, I just couldn’t afford it.

As with housing, issues related to health show mechanisms of parents disqualifying themselves in the benefit of their children. Parents tell us about how they try to save some money by not buying medication for their own health, leaving them with sufficient financial possibilities to take care of their children.

There were moments when the doctor prescribed me medication. I just didn’t go and get them because I couldn’t. You can not deprive your children because you need medication for yourself. It will go over if you hold on long enough.

Also the issue of health shows us how deeply intertwined the interests of children and parents are. A pattern emerges in which a lack of financial resources leads parents to put aside their own interests in order to fulfil the interests of their children.

Child Poverty and Material Support

It has already become clear from the above testimonies of parents that child poverty is not just a matter of the direct living conditions of children (i.e. the childhood moratorium) but also of the living conditions of parents. The stories show that an inadequate family budget has far-reaching consequences for raising children. It often concerns fundamental things that are not available to the family, such as (healthy) food, electricity, the possibility to go to the doctor, clothes or shoes. Something that returns in just about every testimony is the difficulty for parents to abandon their freedom of choice with regard to their income. Many parents in poverty are often in a process of debt mediation and budget guidance, resulting in a limited freedom of choice to spend their available budget. In turn, this leads to difficult parenting choices.

My children asked me: ‘Can we go to the fair?’ I said: ‘what do you prefer? The shoes you need because your feet are practically touching the ground or those 20 euros for the fair?’ It puts children in conflict. They would actually rather go to the fair, but they need those shoes more. And they will always choose what they really need. I feel so bad that I force them to make a choice. Also the first of September, friends at school tell about their holidays, where they went, what they have done, etc. My children can just stammer. Spending one day at the sea for them is already going on a trip. But even that is difficult to realize. I feel so sorry that I have to disappoint them so much.

Work remains an important buffer against financial problems and poverty. Households with no adult paid worker face a high risk of poverty. Professional integration into the labour market through activating policy interventions is high on the policy agenda for people living in poverty. However, people in poverty often face long and inflexible working hours, which make it difficult to combine work with care for children. Combining work with children and the household was often mentioned by parents as an extra challenge to find and continue to work, but, above all, to enable a quality of life for the parents.

I work because then I can keep myself busy. M debt mediator would really like me to work full time. But I already find it difficult to find a part-time job. And honestly, if I go to work full time, I don’t think it’s going to be that smooth with my household. I have to work all summer without a day off. Half days, five days a week. Five days that I work. So, I have now registered the children for day care. Ultimately, I’m going to invest money in working instead of earning some money.

The stories of parents in poverty show the complex interaction between the low family income, the unstable and often inflexible work situation, the experiences with support and social services, and the impact of all this on family education. The lack of a decent family budget is putting relationships in families under pressure, challenging solidarity within the family. Parents in poverty try to provide their children with the necessary material resources, but often fall short due to lack of means. They often compensate for this by eliminating their own financial needs. The lack of material conditions for building a dignified life with the family is also reflected in the reduced self-determination that parents experience in raising their children. A lack of family budget often results in a lack of freedom to define and realize one’s own parenting goals.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we showed that the socio-political arena in which claims for the realization of children’s rights are articulated is of fundamental importance if we wish to understand the issue of representation in relation to children’s rights. The case of child poverty shows us the distinct way children are represented as the deserving poor on the one hand and parents are represented as the undeserving poor on the other hand. This distinction needs to be understood from the perspective of the childhood moratorium, that is, the socio-political institutionalization of childhood in (Western) societies. The childhood moratorium is constitutive for how representational claims are articulated. Consequently, the problem of child poverty is, above all, considered as an educational problem and therefore primarily addressed by educational means. In terms of Fraser’s theory on social justice, our analysis demonstrates how the dimension of representation is inextricably linked with the dimensions of redistribution and recognition. Hence, the childhood moratorium is not only the political arena providing the conditions for defining representational claims. In its turn, it also sets the scene to define who can make claims for redistribution and recognition.

Focusing on the particularity of children and the way their interest are institutionalized in the childhood moratorium can be considered as an important result of the social and political contestation of the children’s rights movement, a social movement advocating in the best interest of children. The children’s rights movement has the historical merit of representing a group in society (children) that in the past was often ignored as a distinct group with their own interests. Accordingly, children often ‘disappeared’ in the context of the family (Reynaert et al., 2009). However, the lens of representation in the case of child poverty shows that the pendulum now risks striking back in the other direction. Understanding children’s rights in the fight against child poverty as a framework focusing almost exclusively on the best interest of children, while ignoring the position of parents living and raising their children in poverty, not only risks excluding parents in strategies to combat child poverty. In its turn, it also risks impacting children, as important social resources in the fight against child poverty are situated outside the childhood moratorium and are connected to the position of parents, such as housing or labour.

So, a first observation that can be made when analysing the issue of child poverty and children’s rights from the representational lens is that where representational claims for children’s rights are made matters. Therefore, if we wish to overcome the dynamic of educationalization of child poverty, we should interconnect the typical educational domains of the childhood moratorium with the policy domains outside the childhood moratorium. Or interconnect the interest of children with the interest of parents. A second observation to be made is concerned with who is articulating claims for children’s rights. Our analysis is based on the perspectives of parents living in poverty. They show how their life conditions of poverty have a direct impact on their children living in poverty and thus on the realization of children’s rights. Looking for answers to wicked problems such as child poverty should not be left to just one group of representatives such as the children’s rights movement or even children. Every representational group in its turn creates blind spots. This is not to suggest that the children’s rights movement or children themselves have nothing to say about child poverty. On the contrary. It rather means that we need to involve ‘critical actors’ who engage in an agonist dialogue (Celis et al., 2008). Until today, scholarship on children’s rights has insufficiently explored these pluralist views on child poverty and therefore have insufficiently insight in the ambiguous relation between children’s rights and child poverty (O’Brien & Salonen, 2011; Morrow & Pells, 2012).