A Spy in the Family

This chapter explores the ethical challenges related to the study of children in highly complex and sensitive family circumstances where intimate partner violence has taken place. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork at a women’s refuge in Denmark, the author unpacks and discusses three key ethical aspects of conducting research with children: gatekeepers and consent, researcher positionality, and participant confidentiality. These aspects highlight the centrality of trust when undertaking sensitive research with children. In qualitative research, trust is often described as an important aspect of the research process, but research rarely takes into account that trust can vary according to the relationship or research context. What spurred these reflections was questions asked by some of the mothers about what their child had told the author. Examples of this kind illustrate the complex role and positionality of the researcher when seeking to enter and explore the everyday lives of children living in complex family circumstances. Furthermore, the notion of trust brings attention to how different relationships of power – in this case between children and mothers – can influence the research encounter. The chapter concludes with a discussion of children’s own positionality in research about their experiences and life worlds, and calls for researchers to be ethically mindful about how powerful dynamics that emerge during research can support (or hinder) children’s rights as research participants.