You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Once upon a time the earth was dominated by a species of predatory animals. There were three classes of those predatory beasts:
adults, called Homo sapiens (wise)
children, called Homo ferus (wild)
tribal gods, called Homo divus (divine).
Not all classes of humankind were born equal. Hence, during that time, not so long ago or far away—the adults were more powerful, ruled more effectively than the tribal gods, and the adults killed the children with impunity. Parents killed even their own children. Calling the children “their own” made it the more monstrous crime in one way, since, according to the infrequent pronouncements of the tribal gods, parents were meant to beget children and to love and nurture them during their early lives of great helplessness and dependency. But the tribal gods had very little say about children on their earth.
“Childism” is a term originated by Chester Pierce, an African American psychiatrist in the Harvard School of Education, and his colleague, Gail Allen (Pierce and Allen, 1975). Childism makes the child a universal object of scorn and exploitation. Pierce and Allen labeled anti-child attitudes and practices childism, the universal oppression, probably wresting the form of the rubric from others such as classism, racism, heterosexism, and male chauvinism.
Eventually, being like a child was viewed as a bad thing, a status to be avoided at all costs. Women insisted that they not be treated as children.