Early Childhood in Focus 3: Developing Positive Identities

From a collaboration of the Bernard van Leer Foundation, Netherlands, and The Open University, United Kingdom, this 58-page issue of the journal Early Childhood in Focus is on developing a positive identity in early childhood. The issue is part of a series of publications produced by the Child and Youth Studies Group. The objective of this series is to provide accessible reviews of recent research, information, and analysis on the Bernard van Leer Foundation's key policy issues on early childhood: strengthening the care environment, successful transitions, and social inclusion and respect for diversity of children. This issue contains sections on the following three topics: the right to identity and the development of identity; developing positive identities; and identities, friendships, and peer cultures.

The issue names the right to birth registration as a principle human right fundamental to identity. This right is given specific attention by the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child, which has universal birth registration as one of its goals. The importance of gender, ethnic, and religious identity, and of an environment free of discrimination, stereotyping, and conflict are cited as vital factors to emerging childhood identity.

The person-to-person nature of family communication allows children the opportunity, as stated here, to construct "a personal identity and acquire culturally valued skills, knowledge and behaviour." Supporting the identity and stability of the family, according to this document, supports the identity development of young children. When children move to group care and education, the interpersonal support of adults giving them care has bearing on their identities and is most effective, according to this document, if it does not challenge or conflict with the family and cultural identity already developed at home. In addition, the document recognises the importance for children of belonging to a group that participates in nurturing them, such as African traditional cultures that "sensitis[e] children from an early age to seek out others and to extract ‘intelligences’ and define self, such that they can ‘gain significance from and through their relationships with others’."

The document identifies the importance of programmes that support parenting and include in their support network children's guardians, teenage parents and single mothers, fathers, grandparents and extended family members raising children, and community and health workers. These programmes were once based on a deficit model, i.e., viewing groups in need of parenting training as “lacking”, such as those with limited language proficiency or limited resources, for example. These programmes are now more participatory and inclusive of parenting knowledge and traditions of local cultures and marginalised communities. The document focuses on the Mwana Mwende project of Kenya, which uses a training programme to initiate participation of the broader community in building self-esteem and confidence in teenage mothers by creating group cohesiveness and encouraging positive behaviour and attitudes, including communicating skills with their infants and children.


Further, the circumstances of immigrant children are considered. These children are trying to manage "complex code switching, continuously adapting their language, attitude and behaviour to various social settings and relationships," made more complex if the child's social group discriminates against those with whom the child identifies as peers or family. The document describes work on non-discrimination developed by a programme in Brussels, Belgium, called the Vormingscentrum voor de Begeleiding van het Jonge Kind (VBJK) (Resource and Training Centre for Early Childhood Education), that has adapted intake procedures at its care centres to "learn from the mothers about caring for their children in accordance with their family cultures, their values and beliefs and, most of all, their mothering behaviour." This is considered enabling information for the staff as they support children in early transitioning from home to group care.


The final section discusses peer friendships and their importance in sustaining children through adversity. The document recognises that children generate peer cultures. Factors involved in peer culture formation may be gender, age, class, race and ethnicity, and religion. They may include hierarchy construction, confrontation, social intimacy, and social exclusion, sometimes associated with gender differentiation. Heritage, including multi-racial and multi-ethnic heritage, may be challenged by peer relationships in a dominant culture. Early childhood programmes can foster resilience in children, as stated here, by equipping children with the tools they will need to sustain their sense of positive identities when moving from family into group and peer situations. “For many children, a secure environment and a sense of belonging are sufficient to enable them to face new challenges. Programmes which emphasise group – rather than individual – activities and achievements, and which advocate the importance of effort in resolving difficulties, help children to develop additional sources of strength... Resilience is linked with two other attributes acquired by children in well-run programmes: reciprocity, a collaborative spirit which values shared activities and the contributions of peers; and resourcefulness, the ability to identify the most important resources (including human resources) for resolving any difficulty, large or small, in any environment.”