Generational order

Generational order is a term used in childhood sociology and describes a type of social order in the social sciences and pedagogy that is based on the differentiation of society on the basis of generation membership. According to the view of modern childhood sociology ( generationing ), the groups children and adults are socially constructed categories that are not of natural origin and contain hidden hierarchies , therefore the so-called adultism based on this is intended to be deconstructed . This describes abusive, discriminatory and prejudiced behavior towards children based on their presumed immaturity.

As a generational class, children stand in the field of tension between market, family and state, and their autonomy as “own” actors should be strengthened ( agency ).

The almost complementary position of children and adults is reproduced again and again due to the already prevailing structures, which is why the structure of society is also viewed critically as "generational". The concept of “generationing” (Alanen 1992) postulates that the “generational” order should be replaced by a “relational” one that focuses on interpersonal relationships at eye level.

“This approach [ generationing ] shows little understanding of the great importance that intra-generational differences and relationships have in everyday life, ” criticizes Heinz Hengst. According to Preuss-Lausitz , the implementation of the concepts of “modern childhood sociology” (“new social childhood studies”) increases the psychological stress of many children, as the shift in the balance of power demands the assumption of responsibility, which may overload children.

With reference to social constructivist concepts , such as the sociologist Susanne Achterberg, an inappropriate sexuality of the child in relation to (to be dissolved) generation boundaries is discussed differently. Doris Bühler-Niederberger (2011) postulates that children are socially "generationally" standardized by adults in order to discipline them to later become "orderly", the integration into a society dominated by adults.

According to Gerhard Amendt , one aspect of gender mainstreaming is the intended dissolution of the generational order.

Example: Parentification of the daughter from partner replacement for father

The generational order in psychiatry, in psychoanalysis and in systemic family therapy

In psychiatry , psychoanalysis and systemic family therapy , value is placed on generational order, since a related disorder among the generations (see also parentification ) within the respective family system usually has a bad effect on the development of the children concerned.

literature

Bühler-Niederberger, D. (2005): Childhood and the order of circumstances - On the social power of innocence and the creative individual , Munich, Juventa.
Dolderer, M. (2010): You are not born as a child, you are made into a child. Adultism, the Pedagogical Matrix, and the Generational Order. Unmade, issue 2/10, pp. 12-14.
Haim Omer, Arist von Schlippe: Strength instead of power. New authority in family, school and community. Göttingen 2015.

Individual evidence

↑ Leena Alanen: Childhood as a Generational Concept. In: Childhood sociological (Ed. Heinz Hengst, Helga Zeiher). Wiesbaden 2005, p. 79: "Then the concept of a generational structure (or generational order, cf. Connels 'gender order') refers to the complex set of social (relational) processes through which some people become 'children' (or being 'constructed' as such) while others become 'adults' (or are 'constructed' as such). (e.g. Alanen 1992; 2001; Honig 1999). [...] The conclusion is: the two generational categories of children and adults are constantly being established in such generation-building, 'generationing' practices. "
↑ Michael Sebastian Honig: Conceptual Emancipation? Systemic problems in childhood sociology. In: Paths to the Self. Social challenges for children and young people (Eds. Harald Uhlendorff, Hans Oswald). Stuttgart 2002, p. 14.
↑ Susie Weller: Teenagers' Citizenship. Experiences and Education. London and New York, p. 6: "As women´s studies aimed to deconstruct patriarchal theory, children´s studies aimed to counter 'adultism' (Alanen 1994)."
↑ as well asport, the portal for the social sciences to: Childhood as a generational concept (Alanen, Leena 2005) : "[...] in a sociology of children with a strong emphasis on the investigation of everyday life, in a deconstructive child and childhood sociology as well as in a structural sociology of childhood. In order to open up the generation issue, the author also discusses the use of the concept of 'generation' in other areas of sociology, for which she looks at both the approaches of class theory and gender theory. Since the generational nature of the phenomenon of childhood primarily implies relationality, class and gender theories are suitable because they are based on a way of thinking that is relational and therefore also structural. The author explores some notions of class and gender so that they can be used as fruitful analogies in rethinking generation in the context of childhood. The aim of their explanations is to develop "generation" into a genuinely relational idea [...]. "
^ Gender Institute Bremen: Glossary: Adultism
↑ Cf. Leena Alanen: Childhood as a generational concept. In: Childhood sociological (Ed. Heinz Hengst, Helga Zeiher). Wiesbaden 2005, p. 74 f: “In addition to this 'market-based' definition of class [according to Weber 1964] there is another one (more common in studies suggested by Marx ) that becomes interesting if it is transferred to 'generation'. Let us begin with the definition of class in terms of the economic relations of production [...]. Class analysis as well as gender analysis (and I would like to add, also generation analysis) [...]. Then it is a matter of examining the relationships between classes (genders / generations) as 'independent variables' and all kinds of other phenomena. But it is also useful to treat class, gender or generation as dependent variables. [...] Nevertheless, the analysis is based on the conviction that class / gender / generation is a convincing structural cause in many cases [...]. "
↑ Leena Alanen speaks in this context of “ agency ” of the children, childlike power / lack of power and to that effect “we [still] have to investigate the concrete social organization of generational structures in a certain society” [not much more comes from Alanen ] - see. Leena Alanen: Childhood as a Generational Concept. In: Childhood sociological (Ed. Heinz Hengst, Helga Zeiher). Wiesbaden 2005, p. 80.
↑ Heinz Hengst: Childhood. In: Lehr (er) buch sociology. For pedagogical and sociological courses. Volume 2 (Ed. Herbert Willems). Wiesbaden 2008, p. 569.
↑ Heinz Hengst: Childhood. In: Lehr (er) buch sociology. For pedagogical and sociological courses. Volume 2 (Ed. Herbert Willems). Wiesbaden 2008, p. 572.
↑ Susanne Achterberg, Forum Kritische Psychologie (2010): The sexually competent child and sexuality as the boundary between children and adults (PDF), p. 76 f: “The analysis presented so far gives a new perspective on childhood and sexuality: Childlike sexuality With the concept of the competent actor, like adult sexuality, can only be defined as a social product. So it is no more natural than this. The sexual peculiarity of the child, ie the lack of sexual instincts and the inability to bind sexually, is therefore not the result of its nature, but part of the generational order. Children are by nature neither impotent nor particularly sexually vulnerable. They are because social conditions give them only limited power and little power over their own bodies and those of others. "
↑ Susanne Achterberg: The child as an object of desire. The pedophile exploitation of the generational hierarchy (PDF). In: Journal for Sociology of Education and Socialization , vol. 20 (2000), no. 2, pp. 167-180.
↑ Gerhard Amendt, however, criticizes according to TAZ: “ Lautmann argues like a pedophile. He makes their denial of generational boundaries his own. ”(TAZ, Nina Apin, October 9, 2013: Pedophile positions at pro familia.“ Needs ”and“ moral panic ” )
↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Christoph Link, 2014: Pedophile Report. Green youth against the line : “From the gay movement came the pressure for impunity of sex with minors. But there was early contradiction, for example from Alice Schwarzer or the sexologist Günter Amendt, who pointed to the relationship of domination between adults and children, which made an equal relationship impossible. "
↑ FAZ, Antje Schmelcher, October 14, 2014: Under the guise of diversity , p. 3 : "In the eighties, pedosexuals would have sold sexual abuse and the disregard of the boundaries between the generations as progressive sex education."
^ Gerhard Amendt: Pedophilia or: About sexual science trivializations of incest-like acts. In: Leviathan , Vol. 25, No. 2 (1997): "Age limits and the successions of generations are indeed rejected by the pedophile profession as fundamental elements of cultural development, theoretically and practically."
^ Doris Bühler-Niederberger: Life phase childhood. Weinheim 2011, p. 70.
↑ Review of "Life Phase Childhood"
↑ See Claudia Machold: Children and Difference. An ethnographic study in an elementary educational context. Wiesbaden 2015, p. 73 f.
↑ The basic considerations of the concept of “orderliness” correspond to the concept of authority and family from critical theory , especially according to Erich Fromm (1932): “Fromm's research on the authoritarian character and its reproductive conditions in the bourgeois nuclear family as an 'agency of society' (1932a, GA I, p. 42) were z. Picked up again at the time of the student movement ; but they are still unchanged up to date today. ”(Helmut Johach: Erich Fromm and the Critical Theory of the Subject , p. 5 or Fromm (1932): About the method and tasks of an analytical social psychology. In: Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Vol. 1 : "The family is the medium through which society or the class impresses on the child and thus on the adult the structure that corresponds to it and thus the adult; the family is the psychological agency of society.") And according to Max Horkheimer (1936) : “The family, as one of the most important educational powers, takes care of the reproduction of human characters, as required by social life, and gives them to a large extent the indispensable ability for the special kind of authoritarian behavior of which the existence of the civil order in depends to a large extent. ”(In: Theoretical drafts on authority and family , p. 49 f). According to Horkheimer, the acquired respect for the father is also to blame for the (reproduced) respect the worker has for the entrepreneur (cf. Hermann Korte: Introduction to the History of Sociology , Wiesbaden 2013, p. 147).
↑ “It stands to reason that differences between adults and children are not welcomed in gender mainstreaming. [...] Gender mainstreaming obscures the fact that there is a fundamental difference between the tender love of parents for their children and the erotic-sexual love between men and women. [...] The second root of gender mainstreaming catches the eye again. There should be no difference between adults and children, because that would be unjust to children because they feel left out. ”(Gerhard Amendt, October 26, 2007: Kinderliebe, Elternliebe ).
↑ See Norbert Nedopil: Forensic Psychiatry. Clinic, assessment and treatment between psychiatry and law. Stuttgart 2007, p. 239.
↑ Helmut Thomä, Horst Kächele: Psychoanalytic Therapy. Practice. Heidelberg 2006, p. 413.
↑ Cf. Gerhard Vinnai (2010): Sexual Transgressions in Educational Institutions - On the Psychoanalysis of Sexual Abuse. (PDF)
↑ “The upheaval of educational authority in general and parental authority in particular during the last few decades is considered to be one of the decisive causes of the dramatic increase in violence and crime among children and young people. Nowadays there is a public consensus that parental and educational authority are very important. ”(Idan Amiel in the foreword of strength instead of power. New authority in family, school and community . Göttingen 2015, p. 13.)

[1] Leena Alanen: Childhood as a Generational Concept. In: Childhood sociological (Ed. Heinz Hengst, Helga Zeiher). Wiesbaden 2005, p. 79: "Then the concept of a generational structure (or generational order, cf. Connels 'gender order') refers to the complex set of social (relational) processes through which some people become 'children' (or being 'constructed' as such) while others become 'adults' (or are 'constructed' as such). (e.g. Alanen 1992; 2001; Honig 1999). [...] The conclusion is: the two generational categories of children and adults are constantly being established in such generation-building, 'generationing' practices. "

[2] Michael Sebastian Honig: Conceptual Emancipation? Systemic problems in childhood sociology. In: Paths to the Self. Social challenges for children and young people (Eds. Harald Uhlendorff, Hans Oswald). Stuttgart 2002, p. 14.

[3] Susie Weller: Teenagers' Citizenship. Experiences and Education. London and New York, p. 6: "As women´s studies aimed to deconstruct patriarchal theory, children´s studies aimed to counter 'adultism' (Alanen 1994)."

[4] s well asport, the portal for the social sciences to: Childhood as a generational concept (Alanen, Leena 2005) : "[...] in a sociology of children with a strong emphasis on the investigation of everyday life, in a deconstructive child and childhood sociology as well as in a structural sociology of childhood. In order to open up the generation issue, the author also discusses the use of the concept of 'generation' in other areas of sociology, for which she looks at both the approaches of class theory and gender theory. Since the generational nature of the phenomenon of childhood primarily implies relationality, class and gender theories are suitable because they are based on a way of thinking that is relational and therefore also structural. The author explores some notions of class and gender so that they can be used as fruitful analogies in rethinking generation in the context of childhood. The aim of their explanations is to develop "generation" into a genuinely relational idea [...]. "

[5] Gender Institute Bremen: Glossary: Adultism

[6] Cf. Leena Alanen: Childhood as a generational concept. In: Childhood sociological (Ed. Heinz Hengst, Helga Zeiher). Wiesbaden 2005, p. 74 f: “In addition to this 'market-based' definition of class [according to Weber 1964] there is another one (more common in studies suggested by Marx ) that becomes interesting if it is transferred to 'generation'. Let us begin with the definition of class in terms of the economic relations of production [...]. Class analysis as well as gender analysis (and I would like to add, also generation analysis) [...]. Then it is a matter of examining the relationships between classes (genders / generations) as 'independent variables' and all kinds of other phenomena. But it is also useful to treat class, gender or generation as dependent variables. [...] Nevertheless, the analysis is based on the conviction that class / gender / generation is a convincing structural cause in many cases [...]. "

[7] Leena Alanen speaks in this context of “ agency ” of the children, childlike power / lack of power and to that effect “we [still] have to investigate the concrete social organization of generational structures in a certain society” [not much more comes from Alanen ] - see. Leena Alanen: Childhood as a Generational Concept. In: Childhood sociological (Ed. Heinz Hengst, Helga Zeiher). Wiesbaden 2005, p. 80.

[8] Heinz Hengst: Childhood. In: Lehr (er) buch sociology. For pedagogical and sociological courses. Volume 2 (Ed. Herbert Willems). Wiesbaden 2008, p. 569.

[9] Heinz Hengst: Childhood. In: Lehr (er) buch sociology. For pedagogical and sociological courses. Volume 2 (Ed. Herbert Willems). Wiesbaden 2008, p. 572.

[10] Susanne Achterberg, Forum Kritische Psychologie (2010): The sexually competent child and sexuality as the boundary between children and adults (PDF), p. 76 f: “The analysis presented so far gives a new perspective on childhood and sexuality: Childlike sexuality With the concept of the competent actor, like adult sexuality, can only be defined as a social product. So it is no more natural than this. The sexual peculiarity of the child, ie the lack of sexual instincts and the inability to bind sexually, is therefore not the result of its nature, but part of the generational order. Children are by nature neither impotent nor particularly sexually vulnerable. They are because social conditions give them only limited power and little power over their own bodies and those of others. "

[11] Susanne Achterberg: The child as an object of desire. The pedophile exploitation of the generational hierarchy (PDF). In: Journal for Sociology of Education and Socialization , vol. 20 (2000), no. 2, pp. 167-180.

[12] Gerhard Amendt, however, criticizes according to TAZ: “ Lautmann argues like a pedophile. He makes their denial of generational boundaries his own. ”(TAZ, Nina Apin, October 9, 2013: Pedophile positions at pro familia.“ Needs ”and“ moral panic ” )

[13] Stuttgarter Zeitung, Christoph Link, 2014: Pedophile Report. Green youth against the line : “From the gay movement came the pressure for impunity of sex with minors. But there was early contradiction, for example from Alice Schwarzer or the sexologist Günter Amendt, who pointed to the relationship of domination between adults and children, which made an equal relationship impossible. "

[14] FAZ, Antje Schmelcher, October 14, 2014: Under the guise of diversity , p. 3 : "In the eighties, pedosexuals would have sold sexual abuse and the disregard of the boundaries between the generations as progressive sex education."

[15] Gerhard Amendt: Pedophilia or: About sexual science trivializations of incest-like acts. In: Leviathan , Vol. 25, No. 2 (1997): "Age limits and the successions of generations are indeed rejected by the pedophile profession as fundamental elements of cultural development, theoretically and practically."

[16] Doris Bühler-Niederberger: Life phase childhood. Weinheim 2011, p. 70.

[17] Review of "Life Phase Childhood"

[18] See Claudia Machold: Children and Difference. An ethnographic study in an elementary educational context. Wiesbaden 2015, p. 73 f.

[19] The basic considerations of the concept of “orderliness” correspond to the concept of authority and family from critical theory , especially according to Erich Fromm (1932): “Fromm's research on the authoritarian character and its reproductive conditions in the bourgeois nuclear family as an 'agency of society' (1932a, GA I, p. 42) were z. Picked up again at the time of the student movement ; but they are still unchanged up to date today. ”(Helmut Johach: Erich Fromm and the Critical Theory of the Subject , p. 5 or Fromm (1932): About the method and tasks of an analytical social psychology. In: Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Vol. 1 : "The family is the medium through which society or the class impresses on the child and thus on the adult the structure that corresponds to it and thus the adult; the family is the psychological agency of society.") And according to Max Horkheimer (1936) : “The family, as one of the most important educational powers, takes care of the reproduction of human characters, as required by social life, and gives them to a large extent the indispensable ability for the special kind of authoritarian behavior of which the existence of the civil order in depends to a large extent. ”(In: Theoretical drafts on authority and family , p. 49 f). According to Horkheimer, the acquired respect for the father is also to blame for the (reproduced) respect the worker has for the entrepreneur (cf. Hermann Korte: Introduction to the History of Sociology , Wiesbaden 2013, p. 147).

[20] “It stands to reason that differences between adults and children are not welcomed in gender mainstreaming. [...] Gender mainstreaming obscures the fact that there is a fundamental difference between the tender love of parents for their children and the erotic-sexual love between men and women. [...] The second root of gender mainstreaming catches the eye again. There should be no difference between adults and children, because that would be unjust to children because they feel left out. ”(Gerhard Amendt, October 26, 2007: Kinderliebe, Elternliebe ).

[21] See Norbert Nedopil: Forensic Psychiatry. Clinic, assessment and treatment between psychiatry and law. Stuttgart 2007, p. 239.

[22] Helmut Thomä, Horst Kächele: Psychoanalytic Therapy. Practice. Heidelberg 2006, p. 413.

[23] Cf. Gerhard Vinnai (2010): Sexual Transgressions in Educational Institutions - On the Psychoanalysis of Sexual Abuse. (PDF)

[24] “The upheaval of educational authority in general and parental authority in particular during the last few decades is considered to be one of the decisive causes of the dramatic increase in violence and crime among children and young people. Nowadays there is a public consensus that parental and educational authority are very important. ”(Idan Amiel in the foreword of strength instead of power. New authority in family, school and community . Göttingen 2015, p. 13.)