Childhood as subject of rights? Children & Adolescents through the socio-legal discourse in the Sexual Education Act in Argentina

Resumen

This paper looks at the discursive strategies revolving around the conception of childhood, parting from the analysis of the main Argentinean parliamentarian’s discourses, at the time of the discussion of the Integral Sexual Education Program. As I will argue throughout the paper, despite legislative reforms that considered children and adolescents as subjects of rights, –even for legislators identified as “radical”–, the adult-centric point of view has not been overcome yet. The adult’s position of domination remains intact, as children are seen as passive subjects, unable to understand or reconstruct the social world around them.

This work is separate in three sections. In the first one, I present the epistemological and methodological considerations. In the second one, I develop the analysis of the Act and the parliamentarian debates in four part: the conception of children; the meanings of legal subjectivity of children; the relationship between sexuality and childhood; and the tension between State and family in order to regulate sexual order. The third one, I draw my conclusions.