Meet “Critical Childhood Studies”:

Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) is an emerging academic field that has developed over the past two decades. The field belongs in the same ballpark as Critical Race Theory or former Women’s Studies (now Gender or Queer Studies). Established to examine the histories and provide cultural context for people oppressed on the basis of race and sex, these fields have morphed.

Rather than helping oppressed communities, critical scholars often promote ideological views on race and “gender” that ultimately do the exact opposite: further fuel racism and sexism. Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) has fallen into the same trap — deconstructing childhood to a degree that, if applied outside of an academic setting, would put children in danger.

“Herm herm. What is childhood really? Who decides? Where does it begin, where does it end? Aren’t we all in a very real sense children? At the same time aren’t children in a very real sense adults? So that means we get to fuck them. Good luck on the exam.”

In the words of CCS academics, they explore “the history and construction of childhood” and “textual and visual representations of childhood.” Adding a postmodern flair, there’s “childhood as metaphor, and children as agents of cultural production,” as well.

Some of it is helpful, some of it is the usual pretentious word-mongering, and some of it…

Third, we arrive at the harmful community of Critical Childhood Studies scholarship: one that seeks to tear down the fundamentals of child safeguarding.

For example, in his 2020 book, CCS researcher Jacob Breslow agrees with other scholars that there exist “queer children.” They’re defined as ones that “display interest in sex generally… in same-sex erotic attachments, or in cross-generational attachments.”

Not for the first time I wonder how Breslow goes about his “research.”

The claims that children wish to be sexually abused by adults form only a minor part of the field. But, the more popular theory that “childhood doesn’t exist,” despite being esoteric nonsense, can also lead to safeguarding issues. One dangerous result of this framework is “the concept of childhood is violence” theory.

A 2021 online book launch by Jacob Breslow, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, mentioned the “violence of childhood.” Three Critical Childhood scholars gave speeches at the event, hosted by LSE Gender.

In her contribution, Erica Meiners claimed that the “categorizations- adult, child, youth perform a kind of violence and ontological disqualification.” She added there is “ violence incurred by the ontological register of childhood.”

Because really children are small adults. The fact that they haven’t gone through puberty yet is neither here nor there.