This project advances understandings of social reproduction by developing an innovative interdisciplinary framework for exploring and conceptualising children’s reproductive labour in the context of (post-)neoliberal welfare transformations.

In the UK, ‘(post-)neoliberalism’ references a cost-of-living crisis, hollowing out of public services, state-funded corporate bailouts, and increasingly targeted welfare provision shaped partially by resurgent nationalism. Together, these transformations mean previous modes of social reproduction, or the making and sustaining of lives, are no longer sufficient or available. Children occupy an ambivalent position in this context. Social reproduction theory emphasises that responsibility for childrearing has been transferred back to families, creating hardship and even destitution. Calls for welfare support are often articulated based on children’s perceived vulnerability, making them exceptionally deserving of assistance. Sociological scholarship on childhood, however, suggests that such exceptionalism reduces children to ‘emotionally priceless’ burdens, obscuring children’s reproductive labour or rendering it problematic in classed, racialised, and gendered terms. Despite these complexities, there have been surprisingly limited attempts to explore children’s reproductive labour in (post-)neoliberal contexts and minimal efforts to elaborate theories of social reproduction that approach childhood holistically.

I address this lacuna by putting social reproduction theory, a core strand of feminist political economy, in dialogue with sociological approaches to childhood as a historical and situated institution and age-graded social position. Building on my expertise in participatory approaches, I develop a pioneering polyvocal methodology, using drama and visual arts to involve ten young people in reflecting on and analysing two contemporary data sets where other children give accounts of care, sustenance, and survival. This will provide insights into existing material about reproductive labour and generate new data as participants layer accounts with their own experiences and interpretative commentary. The approach promises novel ways to understand how children’s reproductive labour is practiced, understood, and valued in (post-)neoliberal societies.