The ‘walking/wheeling with’ framework: establishing walking/wheeling with children as a mobility justice issue

Adopting a mobility justice lens, this review paper brings together the often-fragmented literature on walking and wheeling with children and develops a ‘Walking/Wheeling With’ framework to understand and address the infrastructural, social, and cultural barriers that constrain these mobilities, and celebrate the many benefits they bring at the individual, family, community and planetary levels. Rooted in the everyday realities of caregiving mobilities, and adopting a disability-conscious lens, this framework emphasises that the removal of barriers to mobility enhances inclusion for all. Drawing from history, geography, disability studies, environmental planning, social policy, mental health, physical activity, and early childhood studies, we argue for a more cohesive, inclusive, and cross-sectoral research and policy agenda that recognises walking or wheeling with children as a site of both challenge and possibility. Ultimately, the ‘Walking/Wheeling With’ framework demands from researchers and policy makers alike that they systematically consider family/caring mobilities in relation to broader questions of access, inclusion, and movement in contemporary society. In practice, this might mean decentering speed and car-commuting while centering physical safety, slowness, health, civic engagement, environmental justice and inclusivity.