Money, Markets and Moral Identity: Exploring Children’s Understandings and Experiences of Economic Well-Being

Abstract

In this chapter we explore two themes regarding the relationship between children’s well-being and economic practices. We discuss how children’s economic well-being is deeply embedded in the economic well-being of their families. Children emphasise household standard of living as important to their sense of well-being but also discuss how it is children’s access to direct and indirect resources, intersubjectively negotiated within households, that is significant to their well-being. We discuss the importance that children place on being autonomous producers and consumers, a theme that has been taken up recently in economic sociology, but the realisation of which is deeply embedded in significant social relations. Underlying both themes is children’s emphasis on the importance of enacting moral practices as part of economic practices. In discussing these themes, we explore the implications of children’s experiences of economic well-being for understanding the relationship between market and society as it is relevant to the structuring of childhood and children’s well-being.