Rethinking the Adult/Child Binary: Childism, Children’s Literature and Epistemological Critique
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28998/2175-6600.2026v18n40.21269Keywords:
childism, adultism, adultcentrism, Children's LiteratureAbstract
This article examines the concept of childism as both a critical framework for identifying prejudice against children and a transformative perspective for rethinking social and political relations across generations. First developed in the 1970s in relation to psychiatry, psychoanalysis and children’s literature criticism, childism initially referred to the adult presumption of superiority over children and to the stereotypes, microaggressions and asymmetrical power relations through which childhood is constructed as dependent, immature and subordinate. The article first discusses this interpretation, it then analyses the role of children’s literature as a field in which adult-centred representations of childhood are both reproduced and critically questioned. Finally, the article turns to the reconstructionist interpretation of childism, understood not merely as a critique of adultism but as an epistemological and political tool. From this perspective, childism opens an interdependent political space in which children’s agency, difference and participation can contribute to a broader rethinking of citizenship, democracy and social justice.
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