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Every week until my new book It’s Not Fair: why it’s time for a grown-up conversation about how adults treat children is published on 20th June, I’ll be sharing a short excerpt from a chapter along with some discussion of why I wanted to include that particular topic, anything I struggled with while writing it, and which bits I wanted to include but ended up cutting due to word count!
Just a reminder before I begin that It’s Not Fair is available to preorder now. Preorders are SO important (you can read why here) and make such a big difference to how well a book does, so please order your copy soon if you can - and then spread the word!
As a thank you to everyone who preorders, I’ll be creating some special perks to send out nearer the time (so hold on to your receipt or order confirmation!)
How We See Children
Today I’ll be sharing a short except from chapter one, which is called How We See Children.
This chapter started out as chapter two, but it seemed obvious pretty early on in the drafting / editing process that this needed to be the first chapter, because it sets up so many concepts for the rest of the book.
The most important of these concepts is that the idea of childhood is something that is, at least partially, socially constructed:
“Collectively we have long agreed that childhood exists, but when it comes to considering what it looks like, most of us would say that it exists on a continuum of developing maturity, responsibility, and capability. (There are even some areas where children are more capable than adults, such as in learning new languages.) Although at first what a child is seems to be self-evident, the difficulty in precisely defining the label shows it isn’t a wholly biological or natural category. Instead, the terms child and childhood are socially constructed. The period we think of as childhood isn’t set in stone, but rather has changed and developed in different ways in different societies and cultures, alongside specific institutions, laws, structures, and ideas about personhood. But to say that the label of child is socially constructed is not the same as saying that children are the same as adults and that there is no differentiation between people of different ages, or that children do not need special protections or exceptions. Thinking about children as a social group is important, not least because they face certain struggles and challenges, and being able to state clearly what is happening to whom is important. But when we step back, we can see that ‘child’ is just one of many identities a person may wear, and we can begin to question the rigid boundaries and social norms associated with childhood.
“Rachel Rosen, associate professor in childhood at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, points out that ‘young humans are reliant on others for their very survival ... however, this early dependency has been increasingly taken to describe the institution of childhood, in its entirety, overwriting children’s potential capabilities with social ascriptions of vulnerability, need, and dependency’. Children are capable of being both vulnerable and full of agency at the same time; one does not cancel out the other. If the idea of the child is at least partially socially constructed, then it stands to reason that what we believe about ‘good’ parenting, ‘good’ education, and what it means to be a ‘good’ child can tell us a lot about the society or culture we live in — but not very much about children themselves. It’s these cultural views that we need to unpack if we are to understand and resist the oppression of children.”
I mentioned above that figuring out that I wanted this to be the first chapter in the book ended up being quite straightforward. However, writing it was far less simple.
For a lot of the drafting process this was the chapter which gave me the most grief. I knew it had the potential to be amazing, but I just couldn’t figure out how to make it flow.
I think that was because there was so much I wanted to include in it; after all, how we have understood childhood across time and space is a vast subject, especially when you consider the amount of anthropological, philosophical, and sociological writing and theories out there.
But the more examples I put in, the less clear and coherent the chapter felt, and I ended up talking most of them out again to keep the argument moving forwards. I ended up cutting the whole of a 1,300 word chunk of text which talked about how babies have often been treated as future, or deferred, people, and how infanticide has been a common practice throughout history to deal with unwanted, illegitimate, or ‘defective’ children.
It was super interesting stuff with a lot of anthropology (my first academic love!) but it made for miserable reading, and on balance it felt too heavy for the first chapter. I don’t shy away from uncomfortable topics in the book - there is a whole chapter on child poverty for a start - but it also didn’t add much to main point the chapter is making, which is:
“The power dynamics we might have grown up with, where the adults are in charge and the children are expected to obey, are a choice — even when they feel deeply ingrained and instinctive… When we start to question our long-held — and perhaps previously unexamined — assumptions about what it means to be a child (and what it means to be an adult) we see that there are many ways to be in a relationship with the children in our lives.”
Being a writer with ADHD is both a blessing and a curse for me. On the plus side, I’m good at making connections, love taking in new information, and have a never-ending stream of ideas running through my head. The challenges can be hard to navigate though: spending time I don’t have going down lengthy rabbit-trails, procrastinating horribly, needing vast amounts of caffeine to do anything,1 and - most difficult for me - trying to fit too much into each chapter and becoming overwhelmed when 20 different ideas don’t line up neatly to create a compelling argument.
Thankfully I had an outstanding editor who gently coaxed my mess of ideas into something clear and, I hope, convincing.
I can’t wait for you to read it!
It’s Not Fair: why it’s time for a grown-up conversation about how adults treat children is out on June 20th.
I don’t take meds, though zero shade on those who do!
Learning about the social constructions of childhood was one of those moments when I realised how many taken-for-granted assumptions I had about the way things are. For example, when children are viewed as complete beings rather than somehow being in training for adulthood, how does that change how we view them or treat them? It occurred to me last week that when adults say “why do we need to (insert rights-respecting action towards children here), I didn’t have that and I turned out ok”, it subscribes to the view that childhood is training for adulthood and that we should choose how to treat children based on the impact to their adult future self, not the needs and rights of their current stage. Not to mention that many adults are not “ok”, they just don’t see the negative impact on their self-esteem/lifestyle choices etc! Sorry for the ramble, I just love all this!
I am on the board of a child rights charity so this has gone straight into my basket for a pre-order!