Citation

König J. Child. Vulnerability J. 2018; 1(1): 67-82.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s41255-019-00006-4

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Every case law depends on generalisable versions of the legal norms, which can be interpreted and substantiated in the individual cases. The legal definition of the best interests of the child is negative: The best interests of the child can only be determined from the perspective of their endangerment. However, if legal discourses are mixed with popular and socio-political discourses, the norm of the welfare of children to be safeguarded, which is dependent on generalisation, can become independent in a highly problematic way. In the first part of this chapter, Micha Brumlik's Advocatory Ethics are reconstructed, and in the second part, the current discourse in Germany on "Sexual Education of Diversity" is analysed, in which the protection of the welfare of the child is specifically referred to. I further argue that the systematically necessary abstraction from the concrete content of the only negatively determinable child welfare makes this concept susceptible to (political) instrumentalizations.

DISCUSSIONs of the best interests of the child are therefore indispensably dependent on their mediation with analyses of concrete, socially and historically always contingent constellations.

Language: en