Childism
eBook - PDF

Childism

  1. 320 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Childism

About this book

A seminal volume on prejudice against children for parents, teachers, psychologists, social workers, policy-makers—anyone concerned with the crucial subject of child welfare.

In this groundbreaking volume on the human rights of children, acclaimed analyst, political theorist, and biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl argues that prejudice exists against children as a group and that it is comparable to racism, sexism, and homophobia. This prejudice—“childism”—legitimates and rationalizes a broad continuum of acts that are not “in the best interests of children,” including the often violent extreme of child abuse and neglect. According to Young-Bruehl, reform is possible only if we acknowledge this prejudice in its basic forms and address the motives and cultural forces that drive it, rather than dwell on the various categories of abuse and punishment.

“There will always be individuals and societies that turn on their children," writes Young-Bruehl, “breaking the natural order Aristotle described two and a half millennia ago in his Nichomachean Ethics." In Childism, Young-Bruehl focuses especially on the ways in which Americans have departed from the child-supportive trends of the Great Society and of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Many years in the making, Childism draws upon a wide range of sources, from the literary and philosophical to the legal and psychoanalytic. Woven into this extraordinary volume are case studies that illuminate the profound importance of listening to the victims who have so much to tell us about the visible and invisible ways in which childism is expressed.

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (1946-2011) was a psychoanalyst and the award-winning author of Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Anna Freud: A Biography, and Why Arendt Matters. She lived in Toronto.

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Anatomy 
of 
a 
Prejudice
IT 
SEEMS 
A 
VERY 
SIMPLE 
MATTER 
INTELLECTUALLY 
TO 
distinguish 
between 
acts 
that 
harm 
children 
or 
fail 
to 
meet 
their 
basic 
needs 
and 
the 
attitudes, 
ideas, 
or 
prejudices 
that 
rationalize 
such 
acts. 
Yet 
child-advocacy 
groups, 
Children’s 
Studies, 
and 
the 
field 
of 
Child 
Abuse 
and 
Neglect 
(CAN) 
alike 
focus 
almost 
exclusively 
on 
the 
harmful 
actions, 
ignoring 
the 
even 
more 
harmful 
attitudes. 
Similarly, 
the 
lessons 
learned 
from 
studies 
of 
other 
victim 
groups 
that 
have 
helped 
analyze 
previously 
unacknowledged 
victim 
groups 
(as 
the 
racism 
model 
helped 
researchers 
understand 
sexism) 
have 
not 
been 
applied 
to 
children; 
the 
scientific 
field 
where 
these 
studies 
are 
gathered—today 
called 
Prejudice 
Studies—has 
no 
sub-
field 
for 
children 
or 
the 
prejudice 
against 
them 
that 
can 
be 
named 
childism. 
But 
we 
cannot 
understand 
the 
acts 
that 
harm 
chil-
dren 
unless 
we 
understand 
the 
prejudices 
that 
underlie 
and, 
in 
the 
actors’ 
minds, 
legitimate 
them. 
Before 
we 
turn 
to 
cases 
of 
children 
who 
have 
been 
the 
victims 
of 
harmful 
acts 
and 
rationalizing 
prejudice, 
then, 
we 
need 
to 
explore 
why 
Preju-
dice 
Studies, 
the 
home 
of 
research 
into 
racism, 
sexism, 
anti-
18
C
H
A
P
T
E
R
O
N
E

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Introduction: What’s In A Word?
  3. Chapter 1. Anatomy Of A Prejudice
  4. Chapter 2. Three Forms Of Childism: Anna’s Story
  5. Chapter 3. Child Abuse And Neglect: A Study In Confusion
  6. Chapter 4. The Politicization Of Child Abuse
  7. Chapter 5. Mass Hysteria And Child Sexual Abuse
  8. Chapter 6. Forms Of Childism In Families
  9. Chapter 7. Education And The End Of Childism
  10. Bibliographic Essay
  11. Index