Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.
– Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society
What lies behind our obsession with childhood at a time when the birth rate has been in steady decline for over four decades? Earlier this year Joanne Faulkner argued in The Australian that our adult fixation on childhood is driven by a distorted view of childhood innocence. She blames Rousseau for this. It seems Faulkner believes that Rousseau fastened the grip of innocence on childhood in the way he accorded childhood with the purity of nature and the child with a blank slate. But, this combination is threatened by the menacing influence of culture – by society. Men are not evil, they become that way. As society becomes more complex, so does the task of protecting children against such a fate. And this complexity makes parenting more fraught and the task more urgent. In sum, childhood has not simply become a ‘central focus of adult hopes and anxieties’ but an ideological category that shapes all forms of moral and political discourse and action.
It is increasingly difficult to criticise policy or speech enacted in the name of children’s innocence without being labelled heartless or a pedophile sympathiser. The emotional investment in childhood hides manipulation.
The appeal to childhood innocence reveals far more about adults than about the nature of children. Children become a screen on which adults play out fantasies of a world without work, conflict or competition. This permits an “innocent” enjoyment of their “simple” attitudes.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with the idea that adults are living out childhood fantasies through children, but there’s no doubting childhood is a powerful ideological category because of the distorting influence of its imputed innocence.
Having said that, Faulkner seems to fall into the trap she set for these ideologically blinded adults. More…