What Was the Child? – The New Inquiry

Do children exist?

If you mean is there a period in our biological and cognitive transformation that we associate with “childhood”? Then sure, yes obviously. But, at risk of profound cliché, I’d say it’s also a construct. Where does childhood stop? Why are we segregated from it? Why can’t we also play, explore, wonder? Not only does the ideal of chi

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It’s only in the late 19th and early 20th century that, for a number of reasons (men’s resistance to children’s downward pressure on wages, the angst over autonomy won by working children, the need for a better-trained workforce), children are legally prohibited from most forms of waged work and schooling becomes compulsory. It’s at this moment tha

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