Children in the houses:preliminary results from a study with girls and boys

Children in the houses: preliminary results from a study with girls and boys. Abstract This paper will present some preliminary results from an ongoing explorative research project, which aims to bring children's perspective into contemporary housing research in Norway. Our present knowledge on this subject matter is rather limited. The project is rooted in the "new" social studies of childhood, and hence; Children in this study are brought to the fore as subjects, despite that they are generally subject to controls by parents in the home environment. An interdisciplinary theoretical approach, which integrates a cultural perspective, points to analysis of the everyday material and spatial life of children in a family setting. Five girls and five boys, between the ages of 9 and 12, living in a 4-flat housing area were interviewed. The interviews took place in the family's residence and were partly carried out as guided interviews. During these visits in the home, the researcher also made her photo documentation of the material environment. Conversations and informal interviews with parents are part of the empirical data as well. The following questions serve as a point of departure for the interviews: How do different kind of children's practices vary according to spatial areas in the family residence? Seen in light of these practices, what kind of conceptions and understanding of "the good house" do children express? How do children go about using the different spatial and material resources in the house? In which ways do children use their own bedroom, and how does this use relate to their use of remaining indoor spaces? Do children have favourite places within the house, and if so, where are these places, and what attributes do these places have? In which ways do children and other