Tracing Conceptualisations of Well-Being: Locating the Child in Well-Being Discourse

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore the broad social and political discourses framing contemporary approaches to child well-being research and policy, through an historical analysis of the discourses on well-being as propounded by some key philosophers and social scientists. We identify the ways in which child well-being has, until very recently, been excluded from these discourses. We describe how in more recent research, even where children’s voices are included, hearing them as ‘real’ tends to be rendered problematic due to the research being framed by positivist, measurement-based epistemology. In this chapter, we argue that because contemporary research on child well-being typically proceeds without reference to relevant historical constructions of well-being, an elision between well-being and happiness is perpetuated. This elision, in ignoring the fact that hedonic and eudemonic concepts of well-being proceed from different philosophical bases, contributes to confusion in understanding the phenomena in terms of subjective experience.