Phenomenology of the Adult-Child Relation

Introduction

A phenomenological focus on the meaning and significance of the adult-child relation starts from the question of how the child experiences the relation with the adult and how the adult experiences the relation with the child. Phenomenology explores the immediately lived or pre-reflective dimensions of the relational experience rather than the ways we may already conceptualize, theorize, or interpret adult-child relations. It is a form of inquiry that is rooted in continental philosophy. It aims to grasp the meaning structures of human experiences as lived through in everyday situations, relations, and actions. It is methodologically challenging to determine how young children experience the relations they maintain with adults, especially in infants and young children. The descriptions have to be interpretive and intuitive yet also tentative and informed by psychological and philosophical understandings of the intersubjectivities and intentionalities of the child's...