Child-centered education is supposed to help children become independent, responsible, and confident. From a sociological point of view child centering is a key concept that refers to the multi-layered power dynamics within a long-term sociohistorical process. Based on process sociology, this chapter will explore how since the Enlightenment, national interest in the child has grown and child-centered institutions, professions, and family structures have emerged. This chapter examines the tabooing of shame in the process of child-centeredness, using Germany as an example. The changing figurations since the Enlightenment show the interdependence of child centering and gender relations. In this process, child centering has often followed the regressive fantasies of adults, who looking back, elevate childhood as an ideal state and paradise to which they long to return. The result is an unrealistic exaggeration of the image of the mother which leads to a split between the ideal and enemy image. Since mothers can only fail individually and collectively in the face of the ideal image, mothers become the scapegoats of modernity. Hostility towards mothers or momism and sexism aimed at mothers and caring fathers develops as a fundamental but tabooed form of social discrimination.