childism

Noun

childism (countable and uncountable, plural childisms)

1. Responding to children's particular lived experiences
   • Twain and Salinger's common genius, Heiserman and Miller suggest, lay in their masterful use of a colloquial American adolescent's voice to convey their respective "childism," by which they mean the nostalgic wish to recover our inner Adamic child.2005, Leerom Medovoi, Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity, →ISBN, page 75
   • If nothing else, a project in childism would ask those who study ethics to reflect on whether they are considering the challenge of childhood.2012, Marcia J. Bunge, Children, Adults, and Shared Responsibilities, →ISBN, page 137
2. Empowering children as an oppressed group
3. Prejudice and/or discrimination against the young.
4. (countable) A child-like insight or behavior made by an adult
   • About the same time I was working on my life is a circle theory, I was also working on a childism that could define human behavior and explain why people behave the way they do and predict their behavior.2003, Joseph Assante, Wisdom of a Lifetime: Things I Would Want You to Know If I Died Tomorrow, →ISBN, page 34
   • Apart from categorizing her clients' childisms through the several case histories in her book, Young-Bruehl also applies her schema to the Child Savers of the late nineteenth century in order to highlight the transhistorical nature of this kind of treatment ...2016, “Disciplining Children in Toronto Playgrounds in the Early Twentieth CenturyAnn Marie F. Murnaghan”, in Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures