Childism is prejudice against children as a group. The term was developed by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl in Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children (Yale University Press, 2012), where she argues that prejudice directed at children operates through the same mechanisms as racism, sexism, and homophobia: it constructs its target group as fundamentally different from and inferior to the dominant group, and it uses that construction to legitimize a broad range of practices — from neglect and abuse to paternalistic overprotection — that are not in the interests of the subordinated group.
Young-Bruehl defines the childism stereotype as a foundational fantasy: a belief system that constructs “the child” as an immature being, produced and owned by adults, who use it to serve their own needs and fantasies. This goes beyond physical abuse. It includes the well-intentioned parent who pushes a child to fulfill the parent’s own desires, the educator who treats students as vessels to be filled rather than agents to be respected, and the legal system that treats children as property of their parents rather than as persons with rights.
The concept of childism operates at a different level of analysis than adultism. Where adultism names the discriminatory practices and institutional arrangements through which adults exercise power over children, childism names the underlying prejudice — the cognitive and affective orientation that makes those practices seem natural, reasonable, or justified. In Young-Bruehl’s framework, childism is the prejudice; adultism is its institutional expression.
Childism also differs from misopedy. Misopedy names an antipathy toward childhood itself — a structural hostility that treats childhood as a condition to be overcome. Childism is broader: it includes not only hostility but also possessiveness, sentimentalization, and instrumentalization. A culture can be childist without being overtly hostile to children — it is sufficient that it treats children as means to adult ends rather than as persons whose interests matter independently.