This article examines the social work practices towards children in care in Denmark. For this purpose, it reworks Honneth’s theory of recognition, so it fits with the axiomatic propositions of the new social studies of childhood. The analysis shows how the life of these children unfolds as a continuous struggle over recognition with negative consequences for their well-being. It is argued that while these struggles take place in face-to-face interactions, the violence of recognition is based on wider social structures, such as the generational order, familization of children’s emotional needs and a problematizing, individualistic diagnostic approach to deviation.