Description:
The article provides a critical interrogation into two categories that to a great extent seems to permeate the field of childhood studies, namely becoming and being. It starts out by an analytic description of the meaning of the two thought categories. This is done in terms of an ideal type-like construction. The actual categories are then being critically deconstructed through the lens of five different but interrelated forms of critic. The category of becoming is being defended while the category of being to a great extent is being denounced. However, the article also argues that there is a specific core meaning within the category of being that undoubtedly needs to be fully accepted. The contribution, then, ends with a bringing together of the defended aspects of becoming and the gratified core meaning of being. Accordingly, the theoretical practices of construction and deconstruction end with an integrative reconstruction: a being in becoming and a becoming in being.