Welcome to SLIDING’s third issue! Read this month’s editorial to learn more about what we mean by agency and which exciting content we will share with you in this issue.
What does agency mean? Do children have agency? Do adults need to give them agency and where does that leave the children? Can children take agency? If so, where do they take it from? If you also wonder about these questions when reading the title of SLIDING’s November 2025 issue – fear not, you are not alone. I have spent the last two years studying children’s culture, discussing it with some of the best professors in the field and my fellow classmates, who brought invaluable individual experiences from all over the world to our conversations, and yet, I struggle to define children’s agency. I think that says a lot about the concept: it is individual, dependent on the cultural, temporal, and spatial background of the person defining it.
Children’s literature scholar Nina Christensen (2018) defines agency as “the individual’s right to, and possibility of, acting independently” (p.360). Yet, this very definition exposes one of the dilemmas of children’s agency and children’s rights – the fact that adults are making the definitions about and for but not with children. We should give children the chance to define their agency for themselves, to make their own lives and futures meaningful, even in seemingly small acts, such as picking out a book from the library.
We at SLIDING believe firmly in the so-called kinship model (Gubar, 2013). The childhood studies scholar Marah Gubar explains in her seminal article Risky Business that adults tend to view children as someone other than themselves, someone who is in a transitional space with the goal to grow into being an adult. Gubar encourages the readers of her article to view children as akin to adults and not alien to them. Children are individual, agentic beings who ought to be allowed to make their own decisions and have their own rights. By trying to educate children in the way they deem most appropriate, adults often unintentionally constrain children’s freedom and their ability to fully exercise their agency. With the articles in this issue, we want to make our readers aware of this and invite them to see the potential for and of children’s agency in the world.
“Each child is an individual in their character and their circumstances, which heavily influence their ability to make agentic decisions.”
SLIDING chose November 2025 to dedicate articles and media to the issue of children’s agency to celebrate November 20th, the Universal Children’s Day, initiated by the United Nations in 1954. This day ought to “promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children’s welfare”. In 1959, November 20th marked the day of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child , which was built upon in 1989 with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children’s rights are the topic of ongoing discussion all around the world. For us at SLIDING it is important to note that children’s agency is always dependent on their social and cultural context. Each child is an individual in their character and their circumstances, which heavily influence their ability to make agentic decisions. We will take part in the discussion of children’s rights by offering a variety of articles and media on the topic of children’s agency in this month’s issue.
Maud Smulders discusses agency, curiosity and safety in the Dutch picturebook Vojse. Joshna Joy introduces the development of children’s rights in India, to specifically celebrate the Indian Children’s Day on November 14th. Laura Arrázola-Hernández points out the difficulties of the idealised, Western concept of child activism in regard to the realities of child activism in the Global South. To find out more about this issue, take a look at our list of articles. You will find even more interesting articles and, as always, a fun activity page.
With our content, we want to encourage our readers to think about their own and children’s agency in a new, critical way. What does it mean to you to be agentic? How do you understand a child to be agentic? And what can you do to foster children’s agency, support their rights, and empower them to shape the world?
SLIDING MAGAZINE 
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