Being Related

Abstract

This article builds on sociological accounts of the negotiated, creative character of kinship and on previous studies of children's involvement in family life to ask how children actively create and define kinship and relatedness. Drawing on data from a qualitative study with children aged 7—12 in the north of England, the authors identify five interconnected ways in which children made sense of kinship. They explore how children understood genealogical kinship conventions, creatively deployed or interpreted kin terms, and defined some unrelated others as `like family'. The interplay between children's creative agency and adults' involvement in children's kinship is considered.