Copyright

Olusoga, Yinka; Bannister, Catherine;

Published On

2023-06-01

Page Range

pp. 395–426

Language

  • English

Print Length

32 pages

Keywords

  • Covid-19
  • Mask Wearing
  • Children
  • Families
  • Playful Practices
  • Auto-ethnography
  • Mask Design
  • Fandoms
  • Interests
  • Intergenerational Relationships
  • Agency
  • Celebratory Tradition
  • Vulnerability
  • Pandemic

18. What’s behind the Mask? Family, Fandoms and Playful Caring around Children’s Masks during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Chapter of: Play in a Covid Frame: Everyday Pandemic Creativity in a Time of Isolation(pp. 395–426)
Recognition of Covid-19 as an airborne, respiratory virus introduced mask wearing suddenly, and potentially disruptively, into many children and young people’s everyday lives in the UK. Guidance, and later regulations, requiring mask wearing for older children in communal spaces, and the uptake in families of masks for younger children despite age-related exemptions, meant that many families swiftly began developing habitual practices around mask wearing. This chapter goes ‘behind the mask’ as a physical, material object representative of the pandemic, and mask wearing as a focal pandemic practice, to explore mask-related practices within extended families. These practices began reframing masks as playful personal items, so seeking to make the strange familiar and even fun, to reassure children during a difficult period and to offer outlets for expressing children’s identities and interests. The chapter draws mainly on auto-ethnographic observations within the authors’ families based in the UK, where public mask-wearing as a means of infection control was not a broad societal norm prior to the pandemic. It considers mask design and the giving and receiving of masks within extended families as an extension of and expression of caring, protective intergenerational relationships. It explores childrens’ own agency in mask design and how children drew on their own fandoms and digital/literary/media interests, such as the Harry Potter, Star Wars and Marvel franchises. It also considers how masks were even presented to children as a gift or treat, drawing on celebratory tradition. It demonstrates how the underlying relationships within families behind these practices address narratives of children as vulnerable and lacking agency during the pandemic.

Contributors

Yinka Olusoga

(author)
Lecturer in Education at University of Sheffield
Director of Research Project Childhoods and Play: The Iona and Peter Opie Archive at British Academy
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4779-574X

Yinka Olusoga, PhD, is a lecturer in education at the University of Sheffield where she co-directs the BA in Education, Culture and Childhood. She is the director of the British Academy research project Childhoods and Play: The Iona and Peter Opie Archive, and a co-investigator on the Play Observatory, a collaborative project examining children’s play during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yinka’s research focuses on discourses and histories of childhood, play and education and on the co-construction of environments for children’s play and creative engagement. She is interested in children’s digital literacies and the intergenerational co-construction of play and storytelling.Yinka Olusoga, PhD, is a lecturer in education at the University of Sheffield where she co-directs the BA in Education, Culture and Childhood. She is the director of the British Academy research project Childhoods and Play: The Iona and Peter Opie Archive, and a co-investigator on the Play Observatory, a collaborative project examining children’s play during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yinka’s research focuses on discourses and histories of childhood, play and education and on the co-construction of environments for children’s play and creative engagement. She is interested in children’s digital literacies and the intergenerational co-construction of play and storytelling.

Catherine Bannister

(author)
Research Associate in Children's Digital Play and Wellbeing at University of Sheffield

Catherine Bannister, PhD, is a research associate at the University of Sheffield, exploring children’s digital play and wellbeing, and was a researcher on the Play Observatory project investigating children’s play during Covid-19. She also spends her time picking up LEGO, tripping over toy Minecraft weaponry and wondering what to cook for tea. Her interests include children’s experiences of custom and tradition, in virtual/digital settings as well as in physical ones, and contemporary rites of passage for young people in the context of uniformed youth organizations. Cath is author of Scouting and Guiding in Britain: The Ritual Socialisation of Young People (2022) and co-founder of the Contemporary Folklore Research Centre at the University of Sheffield.