Chapter 4: Listening to Children’s Voices About Family Life: Ethical Dilemmas in Researching Their Experience of Parental Separation and Divorce

Children’s right to express their views about matters affecting them, including their day-to-day home life, is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and domestic law in England and Wales. Policies guiding practitioners working with children in education, health, social care and youth justice settings reinforce this right and set out guidelines about how children’s views may be sought. However, researchers seeking to research children’s views about their family life frequently describe being beset by ethical dilemmas and issues which create barriers to their voices being heard, never mind listened to.

This chapter will explore the ethical dilemmas researchers incurred when researching children’s everyday experiences of parental separation and divorce, raising questions about the extent to which researchers are able to create a space for listening to, investigating and reporting children’s voices. In reviewing international studies researching children’s everyday experiences of separation and divorce over the last 25 years, it asks whether the processes created to ensure ethical approaches to conducting research with children restrict their ability to participate, limit opportunities to share their views and create barriers to their voices being heard and if so, how serious adults are about truly listening to children’s views about their family life.