Childism
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In this groundbreaking volume on the human rights of children, acclaimed analyst, political theorist, and biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl argues that prejudice exists against children as a groupand that it is comparable to racism, sexism, and homophobia. This prejudice—̶childism”—legitimates and rationalizes a broad continuum of acts that are not ̶in the best interests of children,” including the often violent extreme of child abuse and neglect. According to Young-Bruehl, reform is possible only if we acknowledge this prejudice in its basic forms and address the motives and cultural forces that drive it, rather than dwell on the various categories of abuse and punishment.
̶There will always be individuals and societies that turn on their children," writes Young-Bruehl, ̶breaking the natural order Aristotle described two and a half millennia ago in his Nichomachean Ethics." In Childism, Young-Bruehl focuses especially on the ways in which Americans have departed from the child-supportive trends of the Great Society and of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Many years in the making, Childism draws upon a wide range of sources, from the literary and philosophical to the legal and psychoanalytic. Woven into this extraordinary volume are case studies that illuminate the profound importance of listening to the victims who have so much to tell us about the visible and invisible ways in which childism is expressed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this brilliant, provocative book, award-winning author and psychoanalyst Young-Bruehl (Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World) exposes American society's prejudice against its children "childism" and the harm it causes them. Analyzing the social and legal development of childism in the wake of the 1960s youth protest movements, the author urges us to think about the huge range of antisocial policies and individual behavior directed against all children daily, from corporal punishment and an uncaring foster care system to the pressure placed on children to support one parent or another in a divorce. To begin reversing childism, she points to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of the Child and a reinforcing convention on children's rights, which state that children have human rights, that they are not "possessions" of adults, and that adults and governments have an obligation to children. The documents call for, among other things, reducing child poverty and providing every child with the means and the education to develop healthily and freely. It also advocates children's participation in familial and communal life to the extent of their evolving abilities. Painting a world where thousands of children die every day from neglect, hunger, and war, Young-Bruehl's book is a clarion call for urgent action.
