Paper Short Abstract:

Faced with the need to find solutions to the challenges of life with young children, parents or guardians often exploit and use existing 'lower mythological figures' (Heimerdinger, 2011) to bring about desired outcomes (Widdowson, 1972). Today, while some parents use such traditional figures, they also appear to be inventing new 'helper' figures with their children by drawing on the family's shared cultural resources (Gall, 2024). Rooted in ethnographic and autoethnographic fieldwork, this paper will highlight a small number of co-created 'new' traditional helper figures, looking at how they are developed, how they are used by their creators, and how they function in their family context.

Paper Abstract:

Faced with the need to find solutions to the challenges of life with young children, parents or guardians often exploit and use existing 'lower mythological figures' (Heimerdinger, 2011) to bring about desired outcomes (Widdowson, 1972). Today, while some parents use such figures, they also appear to be inventing new 'helper' figures with their children by drawing on the family's shared cultural resources such as their mediascapes (Appadurai, 1990), knowledge of one another, awareness of traditional forms of play, and so on (Gall, 2024). These figures, and the associated play forms and practices in which they become entangled, can be used, instrumentalised, and/or manipulated in a variety of ways by both parents and children to achieve their aims in family life. Rooted in ethnographic and autoethnographic fieldwork, this paper will highlight a small number of co-created 'new' traditional helper figures, looking at how they are developed, how they are used by their creators, and how they function in their family context.