IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION A

Abstract

From May 2023 to November 2025, this study conducted formal and informal interviews, observations of routines before, during, and after meals, and seminars with pedagogues, management, and psychologists. The aim is to explore re-familization and parentification through eating as a pedagogical activity and as a space for formation, development, and care. The new view of the child, grounded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, frames the child as a competent subject with rights, agency, and participation. Yet when this perspective meets the reality of treatment and observation homes, a paradox appears. Many children seem highly self-sufficient, a trait that can look like an ideal of the new child perspective. However, research on parentification shows that such competence often reflects survival rather than autonomy. Studies distinguish between instrumental tasks and the more harmful emotional parentification, where children carry adults’ emotional burdens. This is strongly linked to later psychological difficulties. The study argues for a more nuanced understanding of the new view of the child—one that avoids celebrating all forms of self-sufficiency. Informants describe this approach as “the double gaze”: recognizing the child’s adaptive strategies while also seeing the vulnerable child who needs care and the chance to experience safe dependence. The double gaze acknowledges children’s actions as meaningful but does not interpret them as signs of ‘healthy’ autonomy. Instead, it guides pedagogues in offering corrective, relational care that can counter the effects of parentification and support re-familization as a healing process.