VIRUS Band 17, pp. 257-265, 2020/07/21
Schwerpunkt: Medikalisierte Kindheiten
Die neue Sorge um
das Kind vom ausgehenden 19. bis ins späte 20. Jahrhundert
During the 20th century the child protection provisions of the Swiss Civil Code created the legal preconditions for guardianship authorities to place children with foster families, or in care homes, reformatories or psychiatric institutions if they were at serious “risk”. This article shows how the guardianship authority of the city of Basel increasingly addressed the health of the children in order to justify its outplacement decisions. Children and their behaviour came under medical-psychiatric observation, resulting in the pathologisation of the child. Although the legal preconditions were conducted for the protection of the child, in the course of the 20th century, they resulted in the sanctioning of maladaptive behaviour and societal deviance.
Keywords: Child welfare in Switzerland, guardian ship authority, medicalisation of the child, post war period, psychiatric knowledge, qualitative analysis, scientification of the social
