Introduction: Children’s Emotions in Policy and Practice

Abstract

This edited collection focuses on children’s and young people’s (aged 0–25) emotions in policy-making and professional practice. It explores diverse kinds of policy and practice: from governmental policies to informal education, from psychotherapy to volunteering schemes. It covers multiple substantive issues: from youth offending to nature, and from military recruitment to suicide. Critically, however, given a surge in interest in emotion, affect and feeling across several social-scientific disciplines over the past decade, the book examines the many ways in which emotions matter within these diverse contexts and forms of intervention. The chapters explore diverse forms of emotion and emotion work, including: emotions experienced during the course of professional interventions; emotions underpinning and evident (or overlooked and absent) in policy-making for children; management of young people’s emotions as part of professional practice; and the use of emotion to justify particular moral or political imperatives.