The children living in the world today are still in the clutches of postcolonial paternalism. It materializes in what I have called postcolonial childhoods, and manifests itself in various interrelated forms:

• in the inequality of power and material living conditions between the Global North and the Global South, which has persisted since the colonial era, and the associated global inequality and even the growing discrepancy in children's prospects for life;

• in the dominance of forms of knowledge, ways of thinking and seeing that make the childhoods of the Global South invisible or only distort their expression and lead to disregard, discrimination and negation of the vast majority of the world's children;

• in the persistence of racist violence against children who do not meet the standards of what is supposedly the only ‘real’ childhood in Europe or who insist on a life that contradicts these standards;

• in the oppression and degradation of children as immature and incompetent contemporaries, their social and political exclusion and their instrumentalization as potential human capital in the interest of a globalized capitalist economy; and

• in the distortion and malapropism of human and children's rights within the framework of a Eurocentric development and aid policy of gracious goodwill towards the ‘poor children’ of the Global South.

In the book, I have tried to present postcolonial childhoods in various aspects and to make the presumptions for the children associated with them visible and understandable. This could obviously only be done in excerpts and calls for further, more comprehensive and in-depth research. Although I have tried to consider the children not only as objects of given circumstances, but also as (possible) actors, further research should place even greater emphasis on the agency of children (without essentializing it). There are a few questions that I would at least like to adumbrate.

They include the question of the importance of independent child and youth movements, how they come to terms with the unreasonable impertinence of postcolonial paternalism, what visions of a ‘better childhood’ they produce and how they can be supported and strengthened.