Supporting children’s upbringing: connecting across the generations

This article draws on the writing of the German social pedagogue Klaus Mollenhauer, to argue that upbringing is the overarching task of child and youth care. Upbringing involves adults passing on a valued cultural heritage to prepare children to face the future. It is a moral and cultural endeavor, enacted through caring, inter-generational relationships. The medium for upbringing is the lifespace within which adults present particular ways of being to children. Identifying upbringing as, primarily, a cultural endeavor reframes child and youth care away from an over-reliance on legalistic or ‘scientific’ treatment models to locate it firmly within the social domain.