Table Of ContentFeminist Reflections
on Childhood
Feminist Reflections
on Childhood
A History and Call to Action
Penny A. Weiss
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
tupress.temple.edu
Copyright © 2021 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System
of Higher Education
All rights reserved
Published 2021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weiss, Penny A. author.
Title: Feminist reflections on childhood : a history and call to action / Penny A. Weiss.
Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Summary: “This book recovers a history of feminist thought
and activism that demands greater voice and respect for young people, and urges
contemporary social theorists, too, to do greater justice to children”—Provided by
publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020038642 (print) | LCCN 2020038643 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781439918685 (cloth) | ISBN 9781439918692 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781439918708 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Children—History. | Children—Social conditions. | Children’s
rights—History. | Feminist theory—History.
Classification: LCC HQ767.87 .W34 2021 (print) | LCC HQ767.87 (ebook) |
DDC 305.2309—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038642
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038643
c The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48- 1992
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In beloved memory of
Isaiah Matthew Mejia
2000–2018
The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and
the lives of our children richer and more possible.
—Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”
Women’s past is at least as rich as men’s; that we do not
know about it, that we encounter only interruptions and
silence when we seek it, is part of our oppression. Unless and
until we can reconstruct our past, draw on it, and transmit it
to the next generation, our oppression persists.
—Dale Spender, Women of Ideas
Equating a fetus with a child . . . reduces a child to a bio-
logical abstraction, ignoring the child’s own subjectivity, per-
sonal history, and embeddedness in a concrete community.
—Joey Sprague and Margaret Greer,
“Standpoints and the Discourse on Abortion”
That is what our children can offer us, and what we can
offer them: a chance to learn from them, even as we try to
teach them.
—Robert Coles, The Moral Intelligence of Children
A child is a child of everyone.
—Sudanese proverb
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
PART I INTRODUCING THE CHILD AND
FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES
1 Who/What Is a Child? 3
2 Why Feminist Reflections on Childhood? 19
PART II ON VOICE AND SILENCE
Interlude: The Stories (Voice and Silence) 35
3 The Everyday Silencing of Children and the Feminist Politics
of Voice 43
PART III HISTORICAL THREADS
Interlude: The Stories (Participation, Justice, and Community) 73
4 Reflections on Childhood in the History of Feminist Thought:
Tyranny and Resistance 81
5 Two Models of Feminist Childhoods: Emma Goldman and
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 108
6 Feminist Manifestos: Childhood on Feminist Agendas 145
viii | CONTENTS
PART IV: CONTEMPORARY THREADS
Interlude: The Stories (Shared Hopes, Dreams, and Fears) 183
7 Learning from Feminist Epistemology 190
8 Learning from Feminist Disability Theory 211
9 Learning from Queer Theory 230
10 Childhood in Feminist Dystopias and Utopias 252
Afterword 287
Index 291
Preface
T
he ideas in this book come from a lifetime of interacting with and
thinking about children. These experiences inform and inspire me as
I think about how we can better conceive of children as fully human
and as abundantly deserving of voice and respect.
My adult life centered on children as much as anything else. As a
young adult, I found myself the de facto “child person” at a shelter for bat-
tered women. I grew up the youngest child—the “baby”—in an apoliti-
cal, divided, and isolated family. Before the shelter, I didn’t know much
about the variety of adult- child relations within families, between families,
and with “outsiders” to families. Then I discovered I was good with those
younger than me and comfortable and comfortably curious about relating
with them. The young people at the shelter taught me about damage to and
resilience of the soul and the myriad consequences of domestic violence and
love. My commitment to young people was born at that shelter in South
Bend, Indiana.
Still in my twenties, I worked next at an infant care center (ages six weeks
to two years old) that catered to indigent and professional families. I got an
education there not only about what the very youngest among us are capable
of but also about children and class, mostly through various adults’ responses
to the diversity of children and families. I became especially interested in
and drawn to the “difficult” kids there, determined to understand why they
were considered so troublesome and what was needed (especially) for adults
to see and treat them with more respect and tolerance. I continued to observe
