Growing-up in the countryside: children and the rural idyll

The recent surge of interest in the study of children and childhood has bro ught with it a keener recognition of the diversity of growing-up. In this e merging geography, most attention has been given to the experiences and beh aviours of urban children. Few studies have explicitly focused on what it i s like to grow-up in the countryside, particularly within the United Kingdo m today. In this paper we begin to address this hidden geography by reporti ng on a study undertaken within rural Northamptonshire. We explore some of the ways in which children encounter the countryside through their own expe riences, and (re)examine the 'rural' from their own viewpoint. We uncover a n alternative geography of exclusion and disenfranchisement. Rather than be ing part of an ideal community many children, especially the least affluent and teenagers, felt dislocated and detached from village life. Yet socio-s patial exclusion of this kind is also typical of many childhoods away from the rural and can relate to children almost anywhere. What particularly dis tinguishes a rural upbringing, however, is the sharp disjunction between th e symbolism and expectation of the Good Life (the emblematic) and the reali ties and experiences of growing-up in small, remote, poorly serviced and fr actured communities (the corporeal). (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rig hts reserved.