| Summary: | Childhood as a social category is under strucural redefinition. In this thesis the child and childhood are understood as socially constructed phenomenons. Focus is laid upon the construction of the concept “in the best interest of the child” wich in The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is defined as beeing the foremost important view to take into account when decisions wich affect children are made. As the thesis shows, a concrete and universall view of the best interest of the child is lacking in practice and would in many cases be unfortunate. Hence, the definitions of the term are interpreted as contingent and as negotiated through language (referred to as discourse). The analysis deconstructs utterances in a television based discussion into analytically defined levels of discourse and social practices wich results in a idea of how the child and childhood are defined through discourse. It is revealed that the positions of children and teenagers are mainly set by adult agents and that they sometimes differ from teenagers view of themselves. One of the results of the thesis is criticism against opressing views of the child and destructive definitions of its best interest.
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