Barns vardag med knapp ekonomi : En studie om barns erfarenheter och strategier

This thesis is about the every day life of children who suffer from economic hardship. The aim is, from the children's point of view, to create an understanding of the consequences that economic hardship has on their relationships with their parents and other children. A further aim is to gain an understanding of how children act in relation to the families' economic situation and how they experience their every day life and general living conditions. Parents have also been interviewed about the families' general living conditions and the interaction between children and parents in relation to the economic situation. The empirical data has been collected over a period of fourteen months. Fourteen children aged 7-19 years and eight parents in seven families have been interviewed on five occasions. A total of 44 interviews have been conducted. The theoretical foundation of the thesis is childhood sociology, symbolic interactionism and social identity. The conclusions of this thesis can be summarized in two major results. The first is that economic hardship is of importance in the relationship with other children and in the interaction between children and their parents. The children's possibilities of participating together with peers through possessions and activities are affected to a varying extent depending on the circumstances. The relationship with their parents is also affected by children having to take economic responsibility and by children cooperating with them. Economic hardship also causes a strain on the relationship. The second major result is that children are active in forming theirs and their families' every day life in relation to the economic limits. On the basis of their understanding and their definition of the situation they choose different strategies, the aims of which are either to live within the limitations of the situation, so-called reactive strategies, or to change their own situation and sometimes also the situation of their household. These are defined as proactive strategies in the thesis