Childism: Confronting Prejudice against Children by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (review)

In 1975, two psychiatrists, Chester M. Pierce and Gail B. Allen, identified and defined "childism" as "the automatic presumption of superiority of any adult over any child; it results in the adult's needs, desires, hopes, and fears taking unquestioned precedence over those of the child," qualifying that "[i]t goes beyond the biologic necessity that requires adults to sustain the species by means of authoritative, unilateral decisions" (15). Now, psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl has resuscitated the term, arguing strongly for greater recognition of adult prejudice against children as a first step in rethinking treatment, parenting, and political policy affecting the young. She acknowledges that the term has been occasionally used in the opposite sense of "child-centered," but seems aware that only one meaning can ultimately stick, and so her purpose seems to be to make it stick in a useful manner. Though her work mentions literature only occasionally in passing (e.g., Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Dickens, Sartre, Anthony Burgess), the book should be of interest to scholars in children's literature, especially those focusing on works from the 1960s to the present in the U.S., and those invested in psychoanalysis, traumatology, or children's rights.

First, as Young-Bruehl insists in her introduction, language is key to enabling the reconceptualization of adult-child relations and the mobilization of pro-child advocates to productively focus on the genuine causes of a prejudice that, she argues, "is built into the very way children are imagined" (5). As a specialist in the field of prejudice studies, Young-Bruehl continues in the tradition of Pierce and Allen, arguing that the first prejudice most people suffer from is childism—maltreatment due to small size and young age—and that in the child victim of childism, all other prejudices develop through socially expressed personal vengeance, into racism, sexism, or any bigotry toward others with less power (44-45, 146, 175, 227). Labeling and understanding this cycle is essential to stopping it. In her first chapter, "Anatomy of a Prejudice," Young-Bruehl explains the process and why it goes particularly uninvestigated: "The natural dependency of children has been one of the key reasons for the prejudice against them not being recognized as such or its being so easily rationalized" (55).

In chapter two, Young-Bruehl describes "Three Forms of Childism" that she will identify throughout the book—narcissistic self-erasing, obsessional eliminative, and hysterical role-manipulative—and introduces a lengthy case study of "Anna," a victim of all three. Chapters three through five discuss the establishment of U.S. policy against child abuse (requiring the reporting of incidents) as well as the intrinsically flawed logic of defining and dealing with abuse as a public health matter. Foremost among the mistakes Young-Bruehl recounts in shaping a cultural response to abuse (an expression of childism) is the diversionary tactic of treating it "as a disease of the child. Not a disease of the abuser that is manifested on the child" (106; original emphasis). The history of child abuse and neglect research and policy is troubled by the unwillingness of adults to blame other adults in defense of children; as a result, Young-Bruehl joins others in arguing that "an anti-child political elite inspired by Richard Nixon and then led by Ronald Reagan had defeated or rolled back every concrete pro-child program generated since Head Start began in the 1960s" (141). Complicating such shifts was the growing misperception among Americans that defending child rights interfered with parental rights and so-called family values. In providing a critical perspective on policies affecting children in the US, this book should be of interest to those wanting greater political understanding of the historical context behind literary study.

Chapter six, "Forms of Childism in Families," offers a more complicated explanation of how the various forms of childism manifest and develop in family dynamics. Whereas Young-Bruehl's description of Anna in chapter two sets a concrete example of extreme abuse, this chapter...