Current ethical guidelines for the genetic testing of children protect the `child’s future
autonomy’ from parental choices if there is no immediate medical benefit from testing.
Drawing loosely on `governmentality’ as an analytics of power, we argue that ethical
guidelines are symptomatic of a shift in the way that children are constituted as subjects and
as potential citizens. For instance, the concept of autonomy has emerged as a liberal solution
for the governance of genetic information: subjects are to be governed through their freedom
and by enacting their lives through an ethic of choice. However, governmentality is at risk of
missing some important tensions within the politics of childhood testing if it fails to analyse
the authoritarian dimension of liberalism. The paternalistic character of ethical governance is
not so much a confrontation between autonomy and medical authority, but a new kind of
obligation between professionals and clients. In this paper, we consult empirical examples of
interview data with medical professionals to examine the rhetorical construction of ethical
dilemmas. Professional accounts reveal competing versions of autonomy and ambivalence
about difficult and challenging interactions with parents and children. Our findings suggest
that authoritarian and liberal practices are twin aspects of a practical rationality that seek to
recruit the child’s autonomy as a device for shaping adult decisions and producing future
subjects who are self-sufficient in the management of their genetic risk
