The violation of contemporary childhood through the medicalization of children: between senses, consensus, and dissent!

between senses, consensus, and dissent!

Abstract

Democracy, tolerance, respect for differences, peaceful coexistence between different groups are principles that permeate contemporary societies and have become very present experiences in our modern daily lives. However, when children do not behave in these patterns, the most common option is medicalization. Such experiential processuality, however, ceases to be an exception and becomes the rule. This trend makes children's rights become just dead letters, when they are not vilified and openly violated. The objective of this theoretical essay is to discuss the pluridimensionality of an action that has been characteristic of our contemporary times, the medicalization of childhood and the entire framework of changes and transformations present there. It is a study with a qualitative research bias, using the bibliographic method as a method. Questions are raised regarding: Historical and sociocultural context of childhood, Central concepts: medicalization, pathologization and normalization, Mechanisms of child medicalization in clinical practice, Empirical evidence: impacts on children's health, development and autonomy!, Criticisms and theoretical perspectives, Ethical implications and public policies, Alternatives and possible paths: interdisciplinary and child-centered approaches. Therefore, the considerations made are not opposed to pharmacology, but rather to the decision to make pharmacology the first choice in situations that allow us to decide on safer alternatives that favor the healthy, contextualized and integrated development of the child. Childhood is a historical construction, it is a time of life that is constructed and lived, not a natural “cycle of life” in the strictest sense.