Persons under the age of eighteen are arguably the most disenfranchised and disadvantaged social group globally. As religious scholar John Wall notes, “Children across the world are more likely than adults to be poor, malnourished, deprived of security, prevented from exercising freedoms, silenced, done violence, abused, exploited, and discriminated against.” (John Wall, Children’s Rights: Today’s Global Challenge (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), 7. Given this reality, how can religious scholars influence the academy and religious communities to prioritize children’s well-being and rights? In this paper, I argue that the first step is to re-envision a childist account of what constitutes justice for children that is methodologically grounded in children’s actual perspectives, capacities, and experiences. My constructive proposal for such an account draws on the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, scholarly critique of adultism and the adult-child binary, and religious ethicist Margaret Farley’s account of justice.
To exert power and control over a particular social group, individuals and communities must, on some level, regard the group as “less than” themselves. Western culture has frequently defined children by the capacities they lack, sharply juxtaposing supposed differences between children’s and adults’ reasoning and capacities. Contemporary cross-cultural studies on children’s capacities powerfully challenge these adultist biases and the adult-child binary because they demonstrate that children’s cognitive, psychological, moral, and agentic capacities are more complex and advanced than scholars have historically recognized.
An adequate understanding of children’s capacities leads us to recognize the need to re-envision what it means to relate to children justly in the academy and religious communities. I wish to draw on Margaret Farley’s account of justice for this project because it fosters the epistemic humility necessary to embrace a childist orientation and method to discern what constitutes justice and inalienable rights for children. For Farley, justice entails the ethical principle that “persons and groups of persons” affirm one another “according to their concrete reality, actual and potential” (Margaret Farley, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (New York, NY: Continuum Publishing, 2006), 209).
While Farley recognizes that knowledge of diverse persons is in flux due to ever-changing social contexts and evolving insights into reality, she argues that we can arrive at a shared understanding of concrete reality for all persons. Included here are interrelated capacities for autonomy and relationality, which ground our obligation to treat persons as ends in themselves. If we apply Farley’s account to children as a social group, respect for autonomy entails fostering the development of children’s capacities to make meaningful choices and to identify their “ends and loves” throughout their development.
Affirming children’s relationality now and in the future includes recognizing that supportive relationships are essential for children to grow in their capacities and realize their fullest potential. Given children’s dependency on adult caregivers, affirming children’s capacity for relationality involves doing everything possible to create child-safe and respectful cultures where protection, care for children’s needs and interests, and celebration of their gifts and contributions are top priorities. It also involves learning about their unique characteristics, gifts, vulnerabilities, degrees of empowerment relative to others, and their individual, social, economic, and political positionalities. Affirming their realities in the future involves interacting with them in ways that foster a healthy sense of self, develop their capacities to grow holistically, and discern their life’s purpose. It means considering whether our responses to children open up rather than narrow their possibilities, growth, and future horizons.
Three Commitments of a Childist Account of Justice for Children
What does it mean for religious scholars to affirm children’s concrete realities and relate to them as ends in themselves? This task requires nothing less than conversion from an adultist orientation and methodology to a childist one. Embracing a childist orientation and methodology in religious studies and communities involves at least three commitments. First, we need to recognize systemic prejudices against children and become aware of how our own adultist biases undermine our capacities to understand and affirm children’s concrete realities. Adultism is a prejudice against children and youth that includes beliefs, attitudes, norms, or practices that presume that adult behavior functions as the ideal and norm in human behavior. It assumes that adult ways of knowing and discerning truth and goodness are superior to children’s. In contrast, a scholar who embraces a childist orientation recognizes children’s perspectives as a source of knowledge in the academy and religious communities, responds to children’s diverse perspectives and experiences by continuously revising assumptions of children and justice, and works to overcome unconscious systemic adultist biases to create a child-inclusive culture. Second, we must exercise caution in our generalized claims about childhood and children in scholarship and religious communities, acknowledging that they may have unintended ecclesial, social, and political implications. It is essential to raise awareness in religious communities about how our tendencies to romanticize childhood, idealize children as innocent, or impose other universalizing characteristics result in harmful consequences for actual children. Tropes of innocence eroticize children and not only implicitly tolerate a culture of child sexual abuse but also trivialize children by obscuring their moral complexity.
Third, the aims of the subfield of religion and childhood should prioritize children’s concerns and interests concerning rights and issues of justice rather than adult scholarly interests. To accomplish this task, we need to engage in child-centered dialogical methodologies and collaborate with children as co-researchers so that their perspectives challenge our scholarship and advocacy for children’s rights and influence the ongoing development of religious studies. While some religious studies scholars have consulted children and utilized a sound research methodology, this practice must become the norm if we are to affirm children’s concrete realities as accurately as possible.
In conclusion, re-envisioning a childist account of justice constitutes the first step in prioritizing children’s rights and creating space for children to imagine and enact what liberative childhoods might look, feel, and be like across the globe.
Persons under the age of eighteen are arguably the most disenfranchised and disadvantaged social group globally. As religious scholar John Wall notes, “Children across the world are more likely than adults to be poor, malnourished, deprived of security, prevented from exercising freedoms, silenced, done violence, abused, exploited, and discriminated against.” (John Wall, Children’s Rights: Today’s Global Challenge (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), 7. Given this reality, how can religious scholars influence the academy and religious communities to prioritize children’s well-being and rights? In this paper, I argue that the first step is to re-envision a childist account of what constitutes justice for children that is methodologically grounded in children’s actual perspectives, capacities, and experiences. My constructive proposal for such an account draws on the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, scholarly critique of adultism and the adult-child binary, and religious ethicist Margaret Farley’s account of justice.