The Nature of the Child and the Child of Nature: Historical and Contemporary Continuities

Abstract

A child is possibly the most potent visual signifier in Anglophone cultures. Images of children appear in conjunction with a wide range of consumer goods (kids sell); the idea of the child carries with it an emotional as well as normative message. A child is immediately recognizable both in its appearance and in its high social worth to the extent that both are uncritically taken for granted-social values that are naturalized, we would suggest. The normative expectation of the reproduction of children (in "stable relationships"- often the euphemism for heterosexual relationships) is a key component of another highly emotive social structure-the family. Here, the child represents harmony, stability, conformity, and above all, "baby joy"-in the phrase so beloved of celebrity magazines. Yet, at the same time, contemporary social fears and controversies signal somewhat different sets of ideas about the child that are equally recognizable and accepted as "the norm." Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the child has been, and continues to be seen as in danger and as (potentially) dangerous; as simultaneously innocent and corruptible and as educable and destabilizing. Childhood, as a social status, is one that has perpetuated various discourses regarding race, class, and nation in the Anglophone West. As various scholars have illuminated, "childhood" as a protected classification was often denied to enslaved children in Northern America as well as indigenous children within the British colonial contexts. Moreover, the discourse of child protection has often justified surveillance and various other forms of social and medical intervention in the lives of the poor and marginalized populations.