Child Welfare and Child Protection: Medicalization and Scandalization as the New Norms in Dealing with Violence Against Children

Abstract

Public discourses about violence against children and about child welfare are – for good reasons – filled with normative and ideological presupposition. The reason for the general recognition of the child’s need for protection lies in the Western concept of childhood, which in contrast to adulthood, is a clearly defined phase of life and, unlike the latter, is characterized by innocence, dependence, and vulnerability. Child abuse is therefore also an exploitation and violation of these characteristics, as well as an undermining of the principles of justice, trust, and responsibility. This normative impetus always includes the demand for better – scientifically grounded – prevention against child abuse. The aim of this contribution is to describe the origin of the normative framework for the well-being of children in most countries of the Western world as the result of an interdiscourse of different social systems. Special emphasis will be put on the media representing a broader public and medicine with its specific medical conception of child well-being which seeks to describe children’s welfare in terms of the normal, the pathological, diagnoses and therapies.