ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the idea of letting children speak for themselves at an aggregate and a societal level. It discusses the perspective of the nature of children's representation. To understand such representation it must first be noted that in European societies it is generally unquestioned that children are dependents, and are as such best served if they submit to adults' understanding of their best interests or their own good. The representation of children in statistics and social accounting suggests as one such unjustified exclusion. The chapter suggests that liberating childhood from the representational straitjackets of conventional statistical categories, which at the moment represent children only indirectly. To liberate children conceptually, and thus give voice to their specific life conditions, may in the long run challenge current political thinking about children and in this way challenge our existing social order.
