page_title: Think of the children
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Think of the children / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Jacob refusing to let Benjamin go to Egypt
context_page_description: "Think of the children" is a cliché that evolved into a rhetorical tactic. Literally, it refers to children's rights. In debate, however, it is a plea for pity that is used as an appeal to emotion, and therefore it becomes a logical fallacy.
  Art, Argument, and Advocacy argued that the appeal substitutes emotion for reason in debate. Ethicist Jack Marshall wrote in 2005 that the phrase's popularity stems from its capacity to stunt rationality, particularly discourse on morals. "Think of the children" has been invoked by censorship proponents to shield children from perceived danger. Community, Space and Online Censorship argued that classifying children in an infantile manner, as innocents in need of protection, is a form of obsession over the concept of purity. A 2011 article in the Journal for Cultural Research observed that the phrase grew out of a moral panic.
  It was an exhortation in the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins, when the character of Mrs. Banks pleaded with her departing nanny not to quit and to "think of the children!"
context_section_description: Sociologist Joel Best wrote in 1993 that during the late 19th century, adults developed an increased concern for the welfare of children. Best noted that societies experienced decreasing birth rates after industrialization, with parents focusing their attention on fewer children. According to him, at that time adults began to view childhood as a sacred period of development and children as invaluable, adorable, guiltless beings. During the 1970s and 1980s, Best wrote, adults saw children as potential victims and sought to eliminate perceived threats.
  In the 1995 compilation Children and the Politics of Culture, anthropologist Vivienne Wee analyzed the perception of children by adults and how it supported the concept of children's rights. Wee wrote that in this model (which she called the European pattern), children were seen as defenseless, unadulterated, and in need of protection by authoritative adults. According to Wee, this European pattern led to the idea that children required the sanctuary of the United Nations Charter and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
  Wee wrote: "Alternatively, children's vulnerability could be interpreted as purity and innocence, needing the protection of responsible adults. It is this second, protective mode of interpretation that underlies the very idea of children's rights, needing the protection of a UN charter – hence the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child." She observed that the view of youth as weak and innocent focused on what might occur if children's rights were not shielded.
  Wee argued that this behavior towards children was not entirely positive. According to her, this mindset may lead to hypocrisy by adults who assume that all their actions intended to protect children and creates the risk that adults may wield power "for the children's own good". Noting that adult authority may be masked as empathy, Wee concluded: "These alternative cultural interpretations of the vulnerability of children would thus generate their own respective political and psychological consequences."
caption: Jacob Refusing To Let Benjamin Go to Egypt (1829 painting by Adolphe Rogers)
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