Abstract
This thesis focuses on the variety of ways in which young people who routinely devote a large amount of their time to caring for siblings, parents, or other family members construct their own self identity and have that identity constructed by other family members and by the relevant government institution (Child, Youth and Family) associated with children's welfare. This research analyses the construction of "young carers" by drawing on interviews and some participant observation with three different social groups - young people currently devoting a large amount of their time to caring (purposively selected through media accounts and as identified by government social workers), adults looking back to their childhoods with similar periods of time spent caring (randomly selected from a tertiary educational institution) and government employed social workers (purposively selected for ease of geographical access).
The concept of care as it is culturally constructed plays an integral part not only in the behaviour of children who do, or have, cared but also in relation to how social workers construct the young person who cares at this intense level. The manner in which such young people and their situation have been recently represented in the local media is also described and analysed against popular contemporary ideologies of childhood in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Based on narrative analysis of interviews with retrospectively focused young carers and social workers this thesis argues that the act of sustained caring in childhood/ adolescence has significant impact on the adult understanding of the self for these young people with the availability or otherwise of community/ family assistance significantly influencing their choices of helpful or less than helpful coping strategies.