Description:
<jats:p> The current political and media debate in Germany is increasingly interested in children. This focus is the result of a development over several decades during which not only the demands placed on family and educational policy have changed radically, but also the role of children in the nation state has been entirely re-determined. This article therefore focuses on the question of how the status and significance of childhood have changed in family policy discourse since the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and how concepts of childhood have expanded and shifted. The analysis is based on a discourse analysis of FRG family policy from 1949 on, using four key discourse models on childhood. It states that argumentations centred on the family as an institution have gradually shifted towards argumentations focusing on child policy. This increasing significance of child policy argumentations can only be understood in conjunction with national debates on demographic, economic and education policy. Thus, the article demonstrates that the perception of children as autonomous members of the family and the rise of children as subjects with individual rights are closely connected to problems of an instrumentalisation of childhood. </jats:p>