De Abreu, G.

In ‘Western’ contexts, school attendance is considered central for an ‘ideal’ childhood. However, many young people engage with home roles that conflict with school expectations. This article explores perceptions of that process in relation to two home activities – language brokering and young caring. We interviewed 46 young people and asked them to reflect on what the teacher would think when a child had to miss school to help a family member. This article discusses the young people’s overall need to keep their out-of-school lives private from their teachers.

There has been a great deal of attention paid to young carers in recent research, social policy and service provision. In this paper we report on a survey and interview study of 46 young people aged 15 to 18, nine of whom had experience as young carers, to explore the ways in which young people construct the young carer and their disabled parent. A key theme arising from the interview data analysis is the construction of a series of normative assumptions about 'normal' childhood through which young carers and their disabled parent are viewed as non-normative and deficient.