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The Innocent Child and Other Modern Myths
[...] Childhood -- a temporary state -- becomes an emblem for our anxieties about the passing of time, the destruction of historical formations, or conversely, a vehicle for our hopes for the future. The innocent child is caught somewhere over the rainbow -- between nostalgia and utopian optimism, between the past and the future. [...]
The idea of childish innocence resulted in two kinds of attitude and behavior towards childhood:
firstly, safeguarding it against pollution by life and particularly by the sexuality tolerated if not approved of among adults; and
secondly, strengthening it by developing character and reason.
[...]
This book [published in 2007] is not intended as a guidebook for media and social reformers, not a series of attacks on the corrupting force of mass culture on children's lives. Rather, it will challenge some key assumptions behind those reform movements, rejecting the myth of childhood innocence in order to better map the power relations between children and adults. This book avoids texts that see children primarily as victims in favor of works that recognize and respect their social and political agency.
[...] Childhood -- a temporary state -- becomes an emblem for our anxieties about the passing of time, the destruction of historical formations, or conversely, a vehicle for our hopes for the future. The innocent child is caught somewhere over the rainbow -- between nostalgia and utopian optimism, between the past and the future. [...]
The idea of childish innocence resulted in two kinds of attitude and behavior towards childhood:
firstly, safeguarding it against pollution by life and particularly by the sexuality tolerated if not approved of among adults; and
secondly, strengthening it by developing character and reason.
[...]
This book [published in 2007] is not intended as a guidebook for media and social reformers, not a series of attacks on the corrupting force of mass culture on children's lives. Rather, it will challenge some key assumptions behind those reform movements, rejecting the myth of childhood innocence in order to better map the power relations between children and adults. This book avoids texts that see children primarily as victims in favor of works that recognize and respect their social and political agency.