Images of child well-being in the arts

Abstract

This chapter asks what we can learn about child well-being from attending to imagery created in the arts. Mindful attentiveness, careful observation, and creative emulation are ways of learning privileged in the arts. Works of visual art, fiction, and theater, moreover, render ordinary life more intense than otherwise and thus transform the usual into the extraordinary. They perform this alchemy in safe spaces, where we can pay close attention and be lifted out of our perceptual lethargy. This chapter examines several works of painting, film, fiction, and drama to probe their uncanny capacities to teach us about the nuances of child-parent relations. The chapter models a method for looking, listening, and responding that can be applied to other works of art in similar and different media and in a variety of contexts.