Ok, so I’ve just read Firestone’s chapter on Childhood – the basic position of which is that childhood is an artificial and repressive construct, that people below they age of 16 are just smaller, less experienced people, not a different class altogether, and that our institutionalisation of such a separate realm for them, espcecially through ’schooling’, rather than allowing them access to the adult world, has an enormously retarding and oppressive influence on them.
Now this is a very radical perspective, and very easily prompts reactions of bafflement, amazement, or vociferous denunciation. It seems a bit crazy. So rather than jumping into a the whole issue, I thought I’d develop and discuss two quite specific examples.
The first example is swearing. It has long been thought, and is now still thought by many, that women shouldn’t swear, and that ‘people’ (i.e. adult men) should not swear in front of women. Similarly, and even more commonly, it is thought that children shouldn’t swear, and that adults shouldn’t swear in front of children.
