A psychosocial approach to understanding children’s emotional experiences in a nursery setting

Nurseries play a significant role in many children's lives in industrialised countries as a combination of financial, societal and psychological factors lead to increasing adult participation in the labour market. As children increasingly spend their time within nursery settings, it is crucial to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences within these environments. In the current policy around nursery settings, developmental milestones and attachment tend to be emphasised, leaving aside the complexities that might arise from context and unconscious dynamics. The process of socialising a child goes beyond achieving a developmental milestone, it is an emotionally charged experience for both the adult and the child. This process is further influenced by the habitus of the nursery, which differs from the habitus each child has in their own home. This research examines the relationship between unconscious dynamics and sociological factors in early childhood experiences within nursery settings. It investigates children's emotional experiences and development utilising a psychosocial approach, which draws upon key theorists such as Donald W. Winnicott, Adrienne Harris, and Jessica Benjamin, among others; and sociological theories, such as Norbert Elias’s habitus and the civilising process, Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and capital, as well as Alfred Lorenzer’s scenic understandings. Through six individual nursery observations of four children, as well as interviews with their parents and four key staff members, the research offers insight into how institutional expectations, relational dynamics, and symbolic processes shape the child’s early experiences. Concepts such as language as a third space, emotional regulation, containment, symbolic play, and the emotional labour of staff are brought into focus. The thesis argues that the nursery is not only a site of early learning but also a space of symbolic negotiation, where children’s subjectivities are continually formed, challenged, and reworked.