Introduction

Across the world, mothering is interwoven with women and concepts of femininity (Chodorow, 1989, Glenn, 1994; Arendell, 2000). However, the ideology of intensive mothering and maternal practice is more pervasive and damaging for women who live in fundamentalist patriarchal cultures like Iran (Afary, 2009, Amini and McCormack, 2021) than in more westernised countries.

In this chapter, by employing a biographical approach, I seek to answer how biographical research increases attention to race and ethnicity and the differing experiences of mothers by providing a counter-narrative against the mainstream narrative on agency and ethnicity. My central questions are how older Iranian women feel about being a mother, specifically a ‘good mother’, what meanings they ascribe to mothering, how mothering conflicts with their other identities, such as being a woman and a wife, and how Iranian mothers engage with and respond to the dominant ideology of mothering.

Mothering is a multifaceted and complex concept that comprises both mundane practice and symbolic meaning. In this book chapter, I consider mothering as a gendered and bodily practice, addressing both the materiality of mothers’ bodies together with their social realities and gender as social practices and socio-political structures. However, I explain that women also negotiate cultural meaning and symbols to shape gendered mothering experiences and its bodily practice. This approach enabled me to not only focus on cultural processes but also emotional dynamics, gendered bodies and any non-discursive forms of power and constraint. Moreover, it provides more room for the reflexive self to show how Iranian mothers engage with and respond to the dominant ideology, and correspondingly the experience of mothering is not limited to the passive result of socialisation.

Mothering not only reflects socio-cultural structures and changes, but is also an agent of transformation, connecting personal lives and kinship with larger-scale historical processes. As a key site where family, religion, culture and economy converge, mothering encompasses and relies on norms developed by individuals, families and the gender order of the society. These norms also shape the stigma around mothering experiences such as ‘good mothering’, and highlight the importance of the cultural meanings and symbols in shaping mothering experiences.

Mothering is a gendered practice, as both femininity and gender identity have mothering at the centre. Connell (1987) highlights that social relations of gender are organised in relation to the reproductive division of people into male and female.

Introduction

This chapter examines the meanings of mothering from the perspective of mothers whose identities have been transformed in response to life challenges associated with the parenting of young children, who were of primary-school age at the time of the interviews. The mothers’ closeness to their young children during their early formative years, which is particularly important while children are moving from family to school environments, creates a special bond between mothers and their children, and it is a period during which mothers’ identities are ‘co-shared’ with the identities of their children (Furedi, 2008; Lee et al, 2014; Nurse, 2020). The chapter focuses on two ‘older mothers’ (in their early 40s at the time of the study), with biographical reflection on their identities, parenting and child's development. The narratives are analysed from the perspective of the meaning of mothering of young children, the mothers’ perceptions of their identities and parenting and the impact of their own childhood experiences on their mothering styles. It also contributes to understanding of the structuring (construction) of mothers’ identities.

Biographical methods have long been used in education and human development studies to understand individual accounts of the life experience of individuals within the family and education system (Roberts, 2002; Wright, 2011; Waller, 2010). However they are also relevant and important in biographical studies of individuals who create the environment in which children grow up – mothers, fathers, carers (Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, 1994; Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006). Low income and the socio-economic status of the native-born population (without an immigrant background) may be as ‘disadvantaged’ as those of families with an immigrant and ethnicminority background, which is one of the crucial points in our study; however, a comparative perspective is often overlooked in such research. The perception of mothering by a self-employed middle-class native-born English mother and a second-generation immigrant mother of Afro– Caribbean heritage, who both live in one of the disadvantaged areas of Greater London, is the prime focus of this chapter. Application of the biographical method to interviews enabled the author to gain insight into mothers’ self-reflection on the meaning of mothering in relation to intensive parenting. The chapter also reflects on the challenges and opportunities when interpreting biographical data on the meaning of mothering in relation to intensive mothering.

Introduction

This chapter draws on narrative interviews with 44 disabled women from the province of Alberta in Canada regarding their experiences as disabled mothers. The interview approach is firmly situated in narrative studies and feminist standpoint theory, inviting women to tell their stories in loosely structured ways, based on the understanding that women are best situated to speak to the workings of power in their own lives (Toole, 2021). Although these stories come from one province, they reflect broader experiences of disabled women in Canada, as research nationally indicates that the issues disabled mothers face are depressingly similar across provincial boundaries (Track, 2014; Burlock, 2017). The stories presented here were selected to illustrate commonalities and key differences among the original research participants; a brief biography for each of the seven women whose stories are presented is provided at the end of this chapter.

Ideal motherhood and disability

Feminists have exposed the purportedly private and natural experience of motherhood as a political and social institution. Starting with women themselves, feminists have built a strong body of research that characterises ‘ideal motherhood’ as a socially constructed set of normative expectations that place mothers under increasing demands to be knowledgeable experts on childrearing, limitlessly focused upon and available to their children, and fully responsible for any ills or imperfections that may befall them (Hays, 1996; Malacrida, 2009; Lankes, 2022). Thus, on the one hand, ideal motherhood is characterised as next to sacred, with the future of nations and generations resting in the hands of an omniscient, endlessly nurturant and selfless woman. On the other, ‘bad’ mothers are often characterised as the architects of social, economic, psychological and moral problems, not only for their children but for the nation state, when their mothering fails to live up to those heroic expectations (Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, 1998; Ramsay, 2016). These expectations and anxieties privatise and individualise the work of childbearing and rearing to individual women, while simultaneously providing minimal collective or public support to women in accomplishing that work.

The expectations of ideal motherhood are such that any woman will struggle to satisfy them. However, for disabled mothers, living up to these normative demands is particularly fraught, not because disabled women cannot mother superlatively, but because the barriers to parenthood begin for women long before conception, and are challenged thereafter in multiple and systemic ways (Malacrida, 2007).

Introduction

If we understand children's rights as a specific form of human rights, their beginning would be dated in the European Enlightenment or in the 18th century. However, when we take a closer look at the different aspects of children's rights, it is not possible to limit them to a purely European achievement nor to the past 250 years. Human rights and children's rights are not only the fruit of the illustrious ideas of some philosophers and pedagogues, they also emerge from social struggles for a better life, understood as humane, which could no longer be withheld from children. Children, especially those from the subaltern classes, in former times also participated in this struggle. Today, major impulses for the reconceptualization of children's rights come from young people of the Global South.

In the history of children's rights, two main strands can be distinguished: on one hand, those who emphasize the protection of children and later the guarantee of their dignified living conditions, and on the other hand, those who strive for the equality and active participation of children in society (see Renaut, 2002). The two strands are not entirely opposed to each other, although they have each developed separately until very recently. Internationally, one strand is represented by the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924. As this history of children's rights has already been described extensively, it will not be part of our elaborations here. Rather, we look to the other, less known development, in which children's rights are foremost seen as an expression and means of the emancipation and equality of children (as human beings). As they generally go hand in hand with social movements, which aim at changing social and political conditions, we call them children's rights movements.

Children's rights movements are sometimes distinguished as ‘radical’ compared to ‘reformist’ and ‘pragmatic’ movements (Verhellen, 1994: 59– 60). Here, we refer mostly to the ‘radical’ ones. We see the distinction between ‘children's rights movements’ and ‘children liberation movements’ made by Veerman (1992) as problematic, because there is a particular understanding of children's rights in both movements. As Reynaert et al (2009: 521), we understand children's rights movements as ‘counter-movements’ against movements mainly centred in paternalistic notions of child saving and child protection.

Introduction

Among those who see children's rights as an important achievement and advocate for them, there is agreement that children must be respected and taken seriously as subjects. This is not only as subject in the legal sense, but also in the sociological and psychological sense. The recognition of children as subjects leads to the conclusion not to emphasize what children are not yet able to do, but to focus on their existing or emerging abilities to express opinions, judge and act (agency). It is therefore also important that children are able to express their views freely, gather with other children in their own interest and influence all decisions that concern them (participation). Since children and girls in particular are in a subordinate and marginalized social position, emphasis is placed on the need to strengthen them (empowerment). In view of the temporary or permanent difficulties that many children face in their lives, emphasis is also placed on their capacity to overcome adversities (resilience) and the need to promote it.

I consider all these concepts to be significant and the assumptions and intentions they contain to be relevant and necessary. Nevertheless, I also think it is important to draw attention to some blind spots and problems associated with them. These are not deduced from the concepts themselves, but from a more precise analysis of the social contexts and situations in which children find themselves, and in which the concepts have specific meanings. As the concepts of subject and subjectivity are central to this, I will focus on examining their various contexts, justifications and meanings in relation to children and their rights. Here, I put emphasis on childhoods of the Global South and engage in some reflections on its ambiguities and paradoxes as well as possible extensions and concretizations.

Children as subjects of rights

In children's rights discourse, the concept of the subject has a central and consistently positive meaning. It serves to attribute to children their own legal and social status, which must be respected by society. By designating children as legal subjects or subjects with rights of their own, it emphasizes that they are not dependent on the goodwill of people who have more power than they do that is often exercised over them, but that these persons, just like the state, are legally and morally obliged to respect children as persons with their own dignity. Like human rights, children's rights are both objective and subjective rights. Reference to objective rights emphasizes the obligations of society or the state towards children; reference to subjective rights emphasizes that children themselves can claim and assert their rights.

Introduction

For about two decades now, research on children's rights or children's rights studies have been developing that claim to be a particular branch of research. Similar to social childhood studies and human rights studies, which have a longer history, they consider themselves as a scientific field with specific cognitive interests and questions that differ significantly from those of other fields of research. Although children's rights have been considered for more than a hundred years, we believe that it makes sense to understand studies on children's rights in the strictest sense of the term as research that systematically reflects on these rights. On the one hand, it should examine their social and ideational origins and, on the other, their meanings and impacts in particular contexts. This can be done in a theoretical and an empirical way. Also, it can be related to history and to the present. Logically, it is to be expected that these studies will also contribute to sharpening the contours of children's rights theory just as they are oriented towards certain theoretical approaches (see Cordero Arce, 2015a; Freeman, 2020; Hanson and Peleg, 2020). In this chapter, we only deal with the question of the meanings and effects of children's rights.

So far, the debate on the profile of children's rights studies has been conducted mainly in English. Some similarities can be identified in this debate, but the question also arises as to how the profile of these studies can be refined, expanded and, in some points, reconceptualized. When discussing some of these questions in this chapter and considering the future prospects for children's rights studies, we will also draw on some contributions in Spanish.

There is general agreement that children's rights studies should not be limited to one of the usual academic disciplines, but should be interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary (Moody and Darbellay, 2019; Vandenhole, 2020). This is a claim that can only be fulfilled in an approximate way. However, it can make us aware of the fact that children's rights, like any other right, are not just a normative legal construct, but a complex social factual situation in which different social interests manifest themselves and which can influence children's lives in very different ways. In this chapter, we will identify some of the aspects and contexts that seem to us to be most important.

This chapter provides an overview of extant state-of-the-art international research scholarship on mothering, with a specific focus on biographical approaches to mothering and motherhood. We specifically engage with the potential of biographical research methods in relation to the book's principal themes (for example, individualisation, decision-making, selfidentification, choice, non-normative mothering and agency), which both shape and reflect the multidimensionality of mothering in diverse social and cultural circumstances and culturally anticipated narratives of idealised motherhoods. This volume engages with three (intersecting) notions of reflexivity, positionalities and the multilayered nature of everyday lived realities, which are intrinsic to biographical research perspectives (Wengraf, 2001; Chamberlayne et al, 2002; Caetano, 2019). It discusses key theoretical and methodological perspectives on mothering in relation to salient topics: definitions of mothering, identity, ethics and cultural sensitivity of the biographical approach.

Exploring the multidimensionality of mothering

Complexity of everyday mothering practices

The area of research on mothering is very broad and is rapidly developing (Smyth, 2012; Ennis, 2014; Lee et al, 2014). The impact of feminist scholarship in the arts, literature and academia the increased feminisation of workforces in western societies, raised educational attainments for women, ongoing political debates with regard to reproductive politics and social movements such as MeToo have further accelerated this expansion of mothering research (O’Reilly, 2010; Lee et al, 2014; Yoo, 2020). In her review study, Arendell (2000) categorised research on mothering and motherhood into four overlapping domains: identities and meanings of mothering; relationships, with both children and others; experiences and activities of mothering; and the social locations and structural contexts from within which women care for their children and other family members, which pertain to education and economic factors. Significantly, Arendell further illuminates the significance of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin and immigrant background in research agendas of mothering generally. While Arendell's work originated two decades ago, and is based primarily on the North American experiences of mothering and motherhood, present international research on mothering may be broadly couched within these intersecting categorisations, although novel themes emerge as motherhood and society evolves and changes.

Introduction

Central Europe is considered a cultural space that has complex intersections of languages, ethnic identities and cultures (Johnson, 2010). People with Roma ethnic-minority backgrounds are no exception. On the contrary, their biographies display the symptomatic complexity and tensions with overwhelming power (Sidiropulu-Janků, 2015). Research shows that Czech Roma are oppressed, discriminated against, and economically disadvantaged (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2016; Obrovská and Sidiropulu-Janků, 2021). While interviewing Czech Roma mothers, a diversity of coping strategies was identified, and a decision was made to analyse the intersection of ethnic and economic aspects of mothering over the course of the original project plan. This chapter looks at mothering from a twofold perspective – how Czech Roma mothers understand the notion of good mothering on both a general level and on a more personal basis. Czech Roma represent an ethnic-minority group that is neither coherent nor a traditional social group, yet they show significant differences from the ethno-majority population, for example, with regard to benefit fraud (Kroutilová-Nováková and Kinská, 2017). Living in predominantly urban social settings, mainly influenced by economic and educational deprivation and not symbolically valued for their difference, they represent the survivalist lifestyle of the undeserving people. However, their social structural position is not unique, and closer research of their narrative, self-reflexive understanding of themselves may serve as a reservoir of uncovered knowledge about living outside the symbolic normative mainstream (Frýbert and Pařízková, 2014).

Biographical perspectives on mothering

Being a mother is a seemingly self-explanatory social role. It appears to simply mean to give birth and nurture a child. In this respect, the combination of physical qualities (procreation, pregnancy, giving birth) and normative social practices (upbringing and care versus the economic security expected from a father) resembles pre-reflexive thinking about gender, and the role of a mother is closely interlinked with feminine gender stereotypes (Arendell, 2000).

Achieving distance from the prefabricated normative labels may be especially challenging for people in a socially disadvantaged position. The biographical method is especially useful here not only for its voice-giving potential (Roberts, 2002), but also for uncovering contextual and nonstereotypical notions of mothering through a focus on life narrative as a form of reflection on an individual's life project (Breckner et al, 2000; Chamberlayne et al, 2000).

Introduction

Across the world, many children who cannot continue living with their biological parents are placed into foster care. Female foster carers or foster mothers play a particularly important role in this context. Despite the increase in non-traditional forms of parenthood and participation of fathers in the child's upbringing, mothers, including foster mothers, are still ascribed a central role in relation to child and family care. The mother's central role is both self-ascribed as well as imposed upon them. This chapter discusses the importance and structures of foster care in Germany, and presents the tensions and difficulties that foster parents and foster mothers experience in their various role identities as ‘carers’ and ‘parents’ (Schofield et al, 2013).

In this chapter, I reconstruct two multi-perspective cases of foster mothers who experienced premature and unplanned breakdown of their foster motherhood. These cases are reconstructions of stories of Ms Baggins and Ms Meyer from Germany. The reconstructions include their own perspectives on the foster care case, the perspectives of the supervising social workers, and the perspectives of their foster sons – all of whom were individually interviewed and told their own version of the breakdown of foster care. In the next step, both cases are analysed from the mothers’ perspective. All names used are pseudonyms.

The experience of foster motherhood breakdown is then discussed, focusing on how this experience seriously affected the identities of both foster mothers, and how their experiences reveal central characteristics of a (foster) mother's role. Finally, the question is posed as to whether the observed characteristics of a foster mother's role shape the general image of motherhood in Germany. This puts into question whether mothers can simultaneously uphold modern expectations of being emancipated and selfdetermined, pursuing career and labour market participation, and meet the societal expectations of good motherhood at the same time.

Foster care, foster carers, foster parents, foster mothers: roles, ambiguities and ideas

Foster carers and foster parents

The aim of the first part of the chapter is to contextualise what will be discussed further regarding foster mothers. This part provides a brief introduction to the context of foster care in Germany and Europe, and the particularities, stress factors and challenges of the foster parent role, as well as its ambiguity, lying between a carer role and a parenting role.

This co-edited volume of biographical scholarly works illuminates the flexibility, depth and richness of biographical approaches as applied to mothering and motherhood internationally, highlighting the variety and scope of biographical research in yielding nuanced (and often concealed) aspects of mothers’ lives, which are shaped by labyrinthine factors that reflect the multidimensionality of mothers’ biographies. Drawing on empirical research from both minority and majority world contexts, the chapters presented in this book further reveal the richness of cultural expectations of motherhood that prevail in contemporary societies, which are both challenged and legitimised by the media, policies, governance cultures and religious beliefs. Significantly, we simultaneously underline and challenge the inherently static character of linear categorisations/dichotomies of mothering, which continue to prevail in contemporary literature. Importantly, empirical insights and the authors’ individual reflections further highlight tensions in policy-based narratives of mothering and motherhood, which are socially and culturally variable, both in and across time, place and contexts, while showing that underlying contradictions exist between cultural assumptions and narratives about mothering in policies and society that contrast with women's everyday experiences and lived situations in diverse social and political contexts. The book contributes markedly to extant, international biographical research on mothering and mothers’ lives, highlighting the complexity of mothering and motherhood as socially constructed, negotiated concepts and biographical processes, practices and lived experiences. The utilisation of lifecourse concepts in biographical research illuminates the dynamic nature of relationships between mothers and significant others, everyday ‘micro-level encounters’ (Winter et al, 2017), power dynamics in communities, and the contested nature of social imaginings of motherhood.

Furthermore, this book advances existing conceptual and empirical insights into mothers’ everyday lives, imagined futures and interconnecting past, present and future selves from a bottom-up perspective in the following ways:

• • by examining dynamic interconnections in diverse mothers’ experiences;

• • by identifying areas of confluence and convergence in mothering practices and the multiple (and interconnecting) narrative positionalities of mothers themselves that are both informed and shaped by powerful social expectations both in and across time;

• • by challenging stereotypes and assumptions about what constitutes ‘successful’ and ‘failed’ mothering that prevail in and across multiple cultural contexts, and challenging the predominantly static dichotomous approaches to mothering, revealing instead the heterogeneity and highly contextual nature of mothering and motherhood;

• • by illustrating the multidimensionality of mothers’ agency, individualisation and decision-making in specific contexts;

Introduction

Since the turn of the millennium, social childhood studies have not only become more interested in children and childhoods of the Global South, but have also critically reflected on the Eurocentric focus of previous childhood studies (see, for instance, Liebel and Budde, 2017). This critical perspective has been taken up recently in a special issue of the international journal Childhood, claiming to ‘develop perspectives that de-construct northern, dominant scholarships, and facilitate generative thinking on the study of childhood and children using southern epistemologies’ (Abebe et al, 2022: 2; see also Kannan et al, 2022). Part of this (self-)critical view is that until now, a large part of research has been characterized by an approach that uses children of the Global South as a source of knowledge without asking what the knowledge generated means for the children themselves (see Ansell, 2019, and Chapter 4). I will discuss this in detail in this chapter. I want to encourage reflection on forms of knowledge production in childhood and children's rights research that benefit children themselves and contribute to recognizing them as equal human beings and to strengthen their social position in society.

I will focus my reflections on the question of what kind of knowledge is required to reach this aim and how it can be generated. It must be knowledge that reveals children's perceptions and perspectives, that is, how they think, feel and deal with everyday experiences. And it must be knowledge in which not only the marginalization, disregard, oppression, exploitation and violence experienced by children become visible, but also their potential to defend themselves against it. In my opinion, such knowledge, sometimes called ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway, 1988) or ‘liberatory knowledge’ (Giri, 2013), can only emerge together with the children concerned. It must be legitimized by them and accessible to them. The generation of such knowledge requires ethnographic methodologies that do not separate the researcher from the researched, but see research as a joint project in which there are horizontal and equal relationships between all participants. And it requires methodologies that do not build on cognitive and linguistic premises usually attributed to adults, but give equal weight to mimetic and emotional skills and ways of communicating. Here, I refer primarily to research approaches that have emerged in Latin American and Indigenous contexts and represent what Argentine semiotician Walter Mignolo (2009) has called ‘epistemic disobedience’.

This co-edited book engages with biographical research approaches as applied to mothers’ lives, and the notion of mothering, and critically analyses key questions associated with economic and social inequalities, intersectionality, gender and identity, engaging with cultural discourses of what mothering means in different cultures and societies. The book engages with changing attitudes and approaches to mothering based on women's individual biographical experiences, illuminating how socially anticipated tasks of mothering shaped through interlinking state, media, religious beliefs and broader society are reflected in their identities and individual life choices. Through consideration of trust, rapport, reflexivity and self-care, this collection advances methodological practice in the study of the lives of mothers, carers and childless women.

This book extensively applies biographical and narrative research methods to mothering from international perspectives The book also critically examines issues pertaining to biographical research methods – what it means to undertake biographical research in studies on mothering and mothers’ lives, demonstrating novel methods in international methodological practice.

The chapters throughout this book engage with issues that are critically important in biographical research, including self-care, rapport, trust, reflexivity and self-reflection, showing how these processes shape and reflect narratives of mothering and research encounters with women in various social contexts.

Introduction

No one will doubt that ethical standards are at least as important and necessary in research with children as in any research about or with humans (and animals). And it is to be welcomed that interest in ethical aspects of research has increased in the last two decades and has even led to agreements that cross national borders and are understood as a worldwide professional commitment. The International Charter on Ethical Research Involving Children (ERIC), which was drafted under the umbrella of UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, for example, emphasizes that:

• • children, their views and their cultures must be respected;

• • all children must be treated equally and obstacles to their participation based on discrimination must be challenged;

• • the benefits for individual children or children as a social group must be maximized;

• • the results of research must benefit children;

• • possible harm resulting from children's participation must be prevented;

• • children must agree to their participation, as must their guardians; and

• • the researchers must constantly reflect on the impact of their own assumptions, values, beliefs and practices on children (summarized according to Graham et al, 2013).

But as meritorious and plausible as these general principles may be, they are not beyond doubt and cannot eliminate all the problems, ambivalences and contradictions that arise in research practice even with the best will of the researchers. Their apparent plausibility may even contribute to concealing such problems and contradictions. In our opinion, this is especially true in the case of problems that arise from different life situations, interests and unequal power positions of the persons and institutions involved in the research. Furthermore, it is important to distinguish whether ethical principles are applied in legally regulated testing procedures (‘procedural ethics’) or whether they relate to practice in the research field and the use of research results (‘practical ethics’ or ‘participatory ethics’) (see Abebe and Bessell, 2014). In the first case, they contribute little or can even make it more difficult for ethical sensitivity to develop among researchers.

In this chapter, we would like to draw attention to selected problems that arise in research with diverse groups of children from the Global South, insofar as it is conducted by adults residing in countries of the North especially in the European Union countries. We identify some reasons for these problems and ask to what extent ethical principles can be of help in dealing with and overcoming these problems.

Introduction

Since the emergence of youth movements in the second half of the 19th century, it has been pondered to what extent young people can be a force for change of social conditions. Mostly, social change or renewal is referred to in a general way. Such generalizing theories about ‘generations’ and their relationship to each other were already formulated in the 1920s (see Mannheim, [1928] 1952; Mead, 1970; 1973). The debate eventually extended to young people, who today are subsumed under the life phase of childhood. This is expressed not only in terms such as ‘Young Pioneers’ (in the communist movement), but in the meantime also in numerous statements by UN bodies in which children and young people are declared to be bearers of hope for a better world. Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989 at the latest, the debate on children's rights has also gone beyond questions of child protection and aims at greater social and political participation of children. In the ‘new sociology of childhood’ that emerged since the 1980s and is being newly constructed until today, children are explicitly attributed ‘agency’ and research approaches are developed in which children are granted an active part as producers of knowledge.

The discovery of the young generations as ‘agents of social change’, however, was not the same for all children and young people. So far, the understanding of children as agents of social change has been limited to those younger generations who more or less conform to the pattern of bourgeois childhood and youth, even if they rebel against the bourgeois order, as in the case of the first youth movements. Numerous children and young people who deviated from this pattern in their social behaviour, for example by skipping school or, mostly due to precarious living conditions, who lead a ‘sub-proletarian’ life of their own liking, were branded as ‘neglected’ and a danger to the existing society or the ‘disciplined’ class struggle. In Germany, before and after the First World War, some of these children and young people had come together in groups that named themselves ‘wild cliques’ (see Lessing and Liebel, 1981; Rosenhaft, 1982).