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Childism: Confronting Prejudice against Children is a remarkable and powerful book. Its author, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, was an accomplished
psychoanalyst. At the same time, she was extremely conversant with the social and political history of the mistreatment of children; her research into this history is exhaustive and integrative. Young-Bruehl, a noted and prolific author, has written other books bearing directly on this one, including The Anatomy of Prejudices and Anna Freud: A Biography. She brings to this book a unique combination of scholarly energy, exhaustive research in the social and political realm, the perspective of an extremely talented clinical analyst, and a keen sense of ethical and moral imperatives. Her death in December 2011 is a great loss.
Young-Bruehl sees childism as occurring when “people as individuals and in societies mistreat children in order to fulfill certain needs through them, to project internal conflicts and self-hatreds outward, or to assert themselves when they feel their authority has been questioned” (p. 1). She makes a compelling and comprehensive argument for the existence of prejudice against children and how to correct it.
I will review Childism with an emphasis on the book's importance for analysts and will show how adult and child analysts bring a perspective that is uniquely useful in correcting the problem of prejudice against children. I will also outline the importance of analysts' using their unique perspective to make significant contributions not only in their work but in more public settings.
In the introduction Young-Bruehl defines childism: “My first task in this book … is to make that word, the term whose definition is ‘prejudice against children,’ a part of our vocabulary and to provide a nuanced, comprehensive definition of it” (p. 4). It is her hope that this will make it possible to reconsider the “huge range of anti-child social policies and individual behaviors directed against all children daily” (p. 4).