Arbeiten kinder überhaupt?

In this paper, some contradictions, blind spots and unresolved issues are explored, which can be found in social scientific work on the utility (or usefulness) of children and adolescents. More than anything, this text is thus an exercise in historical sociology. Using the example of recent research from various related disciplines, I show how different and often incompatible with each other, the prevailing concepts of childhood and are working. In welfare state analysis, for example, appear to mothers, fathers, public institutions and private institutions as potential partners / inside in parenting. In contrast, the young people themselves are almost always depicted as a burden on the resources, as precious and less than useful. Some researchers / scholars say, children had to ambitious, financially ill-posed or revised pairs even more sentimental value. In some studies, the focus is on countries determined resistance of children to help in the household, while others noted the extensive involvement of Kindrn in the care of the home and at work, in others the school is conceptualized as work. While many statistical offices collect in their assumption that children do not work, only data on the employment of persons over the age of 15 years, documenting other sociologists / inside one beträchtliehe participation of children in paid work. Some demographer / suspect inside that helps the ingrained futility of teenagers significantly to declining birth rates, while others predict that the increasing participation of married.