The Invention Of Childhood And Its Consequences
Taking a Traditional Catholic View on the Secular Concept of "Childhood"
“We forget, however, that our present concept of “childhood” developed only recently in Western Europe and more recently still in the Americas. Childhood as distinct from infancy, adolescence, or youth was unknown to most historical periods. Some Christian centuries did not even have an eye for its bodily proportions. Artists depicted the infant as a miniature adult seated on his mother’s arm. Children appeared in Europe along with the pocket watch and the Christian moneylenders of the Renaissance. Before our century, neither the poor nor the rich new of children’s dress, children’s games, or child’s immunity from the law. Childhood belonged to the bourgeoisie.
The worker’s child, the peasant’s child, the nobleman’s child all dressed the way their fathers dressed, played the way their fathers played, and were hanged by the neck as their fathers were. After the discovery of “childhood” by the bourgeoisie all this changed… Until the Second Vatican Council, each child was instructed that a Christian reaches moral discernment and freedom at the age of seven, and from then on is capable of committing sins for which he may be punished by an eternity in Hell. Toward the middle of this century, middle-class parents began to try to spare their children the impact of this doctrine, and their thinking about children now prevails in the practice of the Church.
Until the last century, “children” of middle-class parents were made at home with the help of preceptors and private schools. Only with the advent of industrial society did the mass production of “childhood” become feasible and come within the reach of the masses. The school system is a modern phenomenon, as is the childhood it produces.”
An excerpt from Deschooling Society (1970), by Father Ivan Illich
The Invention of Childhood, its Origins, and Consequences
Spare me the jokes, and humor me for a little while because we are about to touch on a subject that hits at the root of many of relational, social, and spiritual ailments plaguing society. This root, however, is one nobody ever digs at, and when they do, they come at it in too much of secular and modernist way; therefore seeming off-putting, or downright creepy. Such is the way of the secular taboos. We have a laundry list of words that we cannot say, and likewise, a laundry list of subjects that are sacred cows. They’re banged into our heads at a young age and they magnetize to our moral compass and keep us off-track.
Unfortunately, much of secular industrial society’s moral formalities are built on nothing, and one major institution that is never questioned, and in fact used as rhetorical firepower by the right wing is the unreality and the innocence of “children.”
I introduced this article with an excerpt from a fantastic book by the “radical” priest Ivan Illich. He was of very few pious men trying to provide proper reaction to the hastening onset of technological society that was jutting into the authority and relevance of the Church - at the time we needed it the most. One thing he really hit at was much of the onset of spiritual insecurity in our society (that begets other insecurities; financial, social, sexual, psychological, etc), and how it ultimately is informed by a nagging sense of obligation to raise oneself out of poverty. This bleeds into every aspect of modern society, and in the latter half of the 20th century has bled into third world nations - some might say it is the worst there. The hastened effort for society to industrialize came with a cursed deep memelogical conception of commoditizing any and every aspect and thing in life. This was almost an ironic knee-jerk, natural reaction by people - in jealousy and pride - to raise themselves above the status they were born into. The unfortunate side of this is that before industrialization, societal castes and classes - regardless of how strict they were - brought the much-needed harmony, sense of obedience, and peace that human civilization requires. Industrial society puts us into a lack of obligation to maintaining harmony, and in fact, forces us into the complete opposite - the worship of capital and labor. This is why economic arguments for liberty and exit from this milieu are moot. They frame the conversation purely in a materialistic dialectic that desires nothing more than material pleasure and continuous further obligation to capitalist institutions and capital structures.
In industrial society, one is not born first into religion and community, but into a process of capital domination, and a dominion of capital. Because of the rush to bathe in the gnostical glory of paradisal fountains in El Dorado, both man and woman have forgotten obedience, and set themselves along the train of one-upping one another to become the most financially independent and free. Industrial society must androgenize because it must annihilate taboos that beget inefficiency. It must reform the man’s masculinity, and denounce his urge for becoming what a full man entails, as such with a woman. All it takes, really, to keep the man from embodying his masculinity to the fullest is by taking away women from his immediate grasp, therefore prolonging his ability to have a family, and likewise, the women prolonging her instinctual obligation to becoming a mother; for both, prolonging their melding to the milieu of childhood.
The androgyny is quite obvious, as we can see in any major city men becoming more effeminate, less stoic, more afraid of being disagreeable and offensive, etc. With women, we can see the sense of obligation to career and/or partying, and treating their romantic and social engagements as purely transactional. There seems to be something so colinear between the androgyny of people and their sense of prolonging the irresponsibility of childhood versus the need to remain a functional cog in the machine of industrial society. Even though much of the liberal youth are making every single mistake possible from normalizing drug addiction, being basically unemployed, getting a bunch of college and commercial debt, getting a bunch of tattoos and piercings, having promiscuous “safe” sex, and getting sex changes; they are playing purely into the industrial machine’s commoditizing game! It seems that the most irreligious, child-hating, body-destroying youth - who idolize childhood and want to extend it as far into their 30s and 40s as possible - are the most engaged into transaction. Their sex is transactional, their friendships are transactional, their engagement with government and their job are transactional, their relationship with their family is transactional. These people simply do not live in a real world, and their sole interaction with reality, and any concepts of love and holiness, are built on a Stirnirite worldview where no one and nothing means anything except one’s own personal ego-gratification.
It is no wonder that the atheist (wo)manchildren are the way they are. They are literally the product of the need for capital and industrial structures that keep society the way it is - bereft of taboo and tradition, but so distracting and engaging and mind-numbing that you won’t do anything about it! They are the chaff in any harmonious, classical society, and fuel in industrial society. When society breaks down, or even gets a little hard, these are the same types who will be committing mass suicide and blowing up government buildings in the name of nihilism. These types come and go in societies of yore, but no society has had more of a technical milieu than ours, and without this milieu, those who have crafted a life purely built on the Brave New World-esque, The Machine Stops-esque aspects will die when it is removed.
We see the problem of extended adolescence, but what is the origin? It’s quite plain to see. Society was never meant to be so perpetually insecure. We are constantly trying to climb the next rung for the sake of pride and impressing - whatever that may look like. Before the renaissance, and more importantly, before the second industrial revolution, that concept of irresponsibility was seen as a major sin. You weren’t irresponsible. You had your lot in life, and you followed in obedience to the man above you. For the first few years of your life, you were under the brow of your father watching his every move and mimicking him. By the age of 11 or 12 you’d already be apprenticing in his craft. For girls, you’d be learning to be a good lady like your mother. Most were starting families in the mid to late teens. And because our lives were so woven into community, the reputation of the father was on the line, so he kept his woman modest, and his sons and daughters respectful and obedient. Everything goes back to the father.
Many can say the concept of “childhood” was broken down by unionizing adults, but it goes much deeper than simply jobs. Besides, that’s a dumbass libertarian argument that doesn’t hit at the crux of the issue - the concept of financial insecurity became what drove society, and not community or religion as it was for thousands of years. Because of this aspect, mothers began to work, men began trying to push themselves into higher jobs. Men who weren’t innovative didn’t get the women they wanted, and so began the last hundred years of tumultuous competition between classes that, before 1900, never existed save for the occasional peasant revolt, which normally was between peasant and government - not peasant and artisan.
It makes sense that when given the sense of insecurity by society one would try their hardest to give their kids the best education and prolong their adolescence as long as possible. Much of what drives most people is quite evident in their willingness to become the victims of usury, and signal their dedication to seeming bourgeois. Ironically, many reactionaries are idolizing the idea of staying at home with your parents for as long as possible and that kicking your kid out at 18 is dumb. I mean, I guess, but this is just the same interpretation of extending adolescence. It’s simply getting used to the fact of childhood extending well into people’s 20s that is making so many people -especially young men - disinterested in financial growth. Rather than being led by the necessity of starting a family, they become led by their own social-sexual insecurity. It’s understandable, but it is only making the problem worse. Men are not meant to be so shallow and disinterested in women. Unfortunately, women aren’t making it any easier.
Women are the most scarred by industrial society because, from a biological standpoint, they need the protection of men to ensure they aren’t killed or waste away from the elements. I don’t like making biological points because they aren’t relevant to people who no longer live in a state of nature, and because man and woman’s social obligations go deeper than pure instinct. Women have an obligation to motherhood, and everything in industrial society forces them into a box of androgyny. They take pills that prevent them from having children and further screw up their already irrational minds, they are told that they have plenty of time, and they are passive-aggressively sent down a path either towards a career or “being happy” which results, and will continue to result for probably another decade or two, in millions upon millions of women who are regretful or resentful spinsters that chose being stressed out cat ladies who work fifty hours a week, rather than happy mothers who don’t have to work. Sadly, our sense of obligation to capital and labor (capitalist structures) put women in constantly insecure positions - that even when they do become stay-at-home moms they still feel the need to signal that it is a “fulfilling job.” Even that term stay-at-home mom has the nagging sound of “I am not unemployed!” attached to it rather than the more important questions - does your family pray together, is your son learning a trade, is your daughter modest, etc.
More than progressivism is the overarching issue of industrial society, and even though many of us are on the track to separating our purpose from it, it won’t stop the issue of extended adolescence among most people. There’s a reason they want to extend childhood - because it is how they justify not accepting obligation and obedience. In most of pre-renaissance society, obligation and obedience were our music. You listened to an order from your lord and you followed it without hesitation, regardless of how it affected your feelings. Most of the time, those feelings were mature enough to take brash orders that went against your desires. Shit, even then, desires weren’t the end-all, be-all - love was. Love for your family, your community, and Christ were the obligation, so you gritted your teeth and did what you had to do. This is the issue that modern people want to circle the wagons on until they’re six-feet-under.
This is why taking the opposite end of this is important, because no matter how much traditionalists say they want to protect children, they need to realize that they aren’t here to protect the innocence of children. You know who you’re here to protect? Your family, your community, and those who repent. “Children,” at most, are people with a need for obligation and discipline that we throw into governmental prisons, separated from their family, and grow increasingly far from tradition. Playing is natural for the young, but they learned quite early that it is chores, obligation, and obedience that mattered more than their selfish need to pleasure themselves. Ever wonder why youth become so rebellious and troubled, regardless of their class status nowadays? They aren’t disciplined. They remain too irresponsible - as if they are toddlers who can barely walk!
This is why for the longest time the Church, uncoincidentally, was the number one equalizing force that put all men and women in their place. Traditional Catholicism brings all ages together to witness Mass, and at least until Vatican II, treated us as its children. Nonetheless, the more modernizing the social milieu (especially among protestants), the more likely they are to baby their children well into their teens and twenties. It is important for the Church to be the dominant authority to prevent the enabling of sin that society does to its youth, but instead we are left where we are - dependent upon the shifting social apparati, guided by entropic, nonsensical social trends, brainwashed by sociological technique of androgenizing educational institutions, made to prostrate ourselves to capital structures and ascending rays of progress, all the while leaving the Remnant of Christ behind. Everything industrial society does tears us away from Christ, our obedience to him, our obedience to Church. Everything about Christ and the authority of the Church fosters toughness and stoicism among men who can eat pain and push back chaotic emotions, and femininity and modesty among women who want to decorate a beautiful house and give birth to several children.
While the “child” is a thing, as in it is your offspring, the conception of “childhood” has wrought the slippery slope effect that every industrial trope brings. It is meant to androgenize and bring everyone down to a sense of constant insecurity and chasing the dragon of competition. We fool ourselves by constantly changing the facts, in secular society, in hopes of reforming reality to what we think it is. The cold hard fact is, that without the ascending ray of progress as the deep meme for this paradigm, but rather with the backdrop of the Church, there wouldn’t be such a society unfolding as it is now.
Which is why the invention of childhood is one of the biggest lies that we continue to foster because we are too afraid to face the fact that without the phony comfort of modernity, the harshness of a classical lifestyle with classes, obedience, and hierarchy would return in an instant. I am one that favors this, because I know that it is likely to return in the advent of further collapsing complexity. What I would hope is that, in such a situation, reactionaries would realize the necessity to man up and woman down, and stop pretending that it is innocence but fierceness they are trying to protect. This is why the political game can’t be played without a lot of lying and coercion these days - because ultimately you’re furthering the same androgenizing milieu! We are not here to empower individuals through rebellion, but shoulder them with obligation. Rather a cross be carried, than the burden of sin.
And isn’t it sin that we toss upon the youth of today? Rather than laying down firm constraints and spiritual regulation - from peasant class to priest class every man and woman is absolved of any obligation to God, and only to the perpetuation of commodity and transaction, that all be damned but the capitalist structures holding up industrial and post-industrial societies. Monetary and technological worship were what led us to this situation, and we know exactly what can take us back to common sense and peace. Shoulder your son with responsibility, make your daughter wear modest clothing, and take away their access to technology. Raise them with a constant sense of obligation to Christ, family, and community (in that order). Because it is the enemy that is further catering to their sinful sensibilities and hoping they become and stay rebellious youth; similar such archetypes existing in older generations that never faced that they’re getting old. No wonder it is only now that every class of people try so hard to extend even their youth well past their fifties, and try to still be cool. See the correlation?
It is no coincidence that Traditional Catholicism wants to minimize the place of a childhood, as to empower the responsibility to obedience, a simple life, and to Christ.
It is no coincidence that atheist liberals want to maximize the place of childhood, as to empower reliance on the state, a complex life of sin, and distance from humility and Christ
So, with that being said: Grow up!
“If there were no age-specific and obligatory learning institution, “childhood” would go out of production. The youth of rich nations would be liberated from its destructiveness, and poor nations would cease attempting to rival the childishness of the rich. If society were to outgrow its age of childhood, it would have to become livable for the young. The present disjunction between an adult society which pretends to be humane and a school environment which mocks reality could no longer be maintained.
The disestablishment of schools could also end the present discrimination against infants, adults, and the old in favor of children throughout their adolescence and youth. The social decision to allocate educational resources preferably to those citizens who have outgrown the extraordinary learning capacity of their first four years and have not arrived at the height of their self-motivated learning will, in retrospect probably appear as bizarre.
Institutional wisdom tells us that children need school. Institutional wisdom tells us that children learn in school. But this institutional wisdom is itself the product of schools because sound common sense tells us that only children can be taught in school. Only by segregating human being in the category of childhood could we ever get them to submit to the authority of the schoolteacher.”
An excerpt from Deschooling Society (1970), by Father Ivan Illich
There’s a lot in here that rings very true.
An interesting problem is that this is primarily a prescription for the stable functioning of the working class (don’t strive for upward mobility but to deepen the ties you have within the local community of your birth, start apprenticeships at a young age, etc.).
The structure of working class life largely evolves out of the pressures (financial, cultural) that they are subject to, and these pressures are defined by the decisions (political, economic) made by the elite (middle class and upwards), and beyond that, to international macro-governance.
So the question becomes not how the working class should best live in order to secure their stable flourishing (which I think you’ve captured well), but how a new generation of elites can engender domestic conditions that create the right pressures for the working class to flourish, while allowing the country to be competitive on the international stage and to not plunge the country into chaos. Without being financially and culturally competitive, nations inevitably suffer tremendous brain-drains, and the youth long to live in culturally dominant nations like the US.
For better or worse, our economies are now built on the presumption that almost all women will work, for example, and transitioning away from that in a stable manner that doesn’t collapse everyone’s livelihoods will be a challenging task. There’s also the question of how you muster the political will and power necessary to implement these changes given the challenge they would pose to existing powerful agents that profit from them.
But this remains an essential task!