ABSTRACT

The following chapter starts out from the assumption that children's agency manifests itself in relation to processes of generational ordering. These processes are closely connected to the social order in general, and as key elements of the social hierarchy reveal themselves to be a consistent, if variable, factor. The analysis of parent guidebooks published in Germany from 1950 onwards illustrates the malleability of the concept of children's agency and how this concept corresponds to differing forms of generational order, forms that themselves are influenced by historical events and wide-ranging social discourses. For the period under discussion, we can identify four distinct forms of socially desirable child agency. Into the 1960s, there is the continuation of authoritarian structures of subordination that are only undone in the 1970s through the emergence of democratic family structures informed by a higher degree of pedagogical expertise. A new, more broadly conceived child agency can be seen in the “Kinderladen” and anti-authoritarian education movement, something that, however, has become increasingly constrained since 1990.