Puerilizado y adulterado: representaciones institucionales de la infancia.

Abstract

The institutional representations oscillate between an “infantilization” of the child, subordinating his character as a person to his infantile conditions, under the risk of making him childish in his development, and an “adulteration” of the child, that subordinates his infantile condition to the character as a person. Today the neoliberal speech, the market and an irresponsible infantology try to free the child from his infantile conditions, to make him behave like an adult. The attribution of a complete set of rights to the child whose possibilities to carry them out abstain from his real infantile conditions, also they tend to make the child similar to an adult before the law, with serious judicial and penal consequences for children precociously criminalized. This is the way how the present-day society eludes all the responsibility that has to do with infantile delinquency and criminality which is each time more precocious.