“Childish” shouldn’t be an insult.
Adultist language is harmful — don’t use it.
Why is it that adults dread being compared to children, but children strive to be compared to adults? “Babyish”, “childish”, “ infantile” and “immature” are considered insults while “adult” and “grown-up” are seen as compliments. On one hand, it makes sense, the role society pushes children to play is that of an inferior and inherently humiliating. On the other hand, the fact that saying “you’re acting like a child” is an insult helps to perpetuate the adultism that pushes children into that role. When a child slightly deviates from that role they are told “you’re so mature for your age”, which is supposed to make a child feel good for being compared to a class that is considered superior. The celebration of children that are “mature for their age” is by the way only a recent development in the history of childhood since 1700. So-called “prodigies” are praised today, but it wasn’t always like this. For a long time, “precocious” was the worst thing a child could be, “precocity” was pathologized, and precocious children were said to die young (Rutschky, 1977). Rousseau had written in his “Émile”:
“Nature wants children to be children before they are men”.
After all, it’s in the Bible:
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
The Romantic cult of the child necessitated the reinforcement of strict age roles. But even when some individual children are praised for being “mature of their age”, the shame tied to the idea of the Child oppresses all of them. Adults insult each other by comparisons with children, and when they do that, children learn they are seen as inferior. Children insult each other by comparisons with babies. “Crybaby” isn’t a compliment. This also intercepts with misogyny — often “childish” and “babyish” are used to imply something that is also commonly associated with women, like crying, weakness, and dependence. In the use of words like “baby” as insults, childhood is coded as feminine and adulthood as masculine, reinforcing the dominant position of heterosexual masculinity in society (Alexander, 2020). Adult masculinity is framed as the standard against which everyone else is measured.
Adults often insult children by telling them they are acting younger than their age or like babies, to get them to stop bothering them. It is adults who police the behavior of children and tell them to “act their age”, especially among younger children, this often means that they shouldn’t act younger, which is shameful. Among teens, it is most often used to mean do not act older because adults feel threatened by the agency of teens. Today a child is praised for being “mature for their age”, but of course not when they diverge so much from the social role of children to start presenting an actual threat to adult hegemony. A good child who is “mature for their age” is a younger child who takes responsibilities (but demands no rights), doesn’t cry, whine, or ask for attention, doesn’t make messes, is smart enough to have good grades but not smart enough to humiliate adults, and helps adults with their chores. A bad child who is “mature for their age”, or better, “acts grown” (as when it pleases adults the “maturity” is framed as genuine, when it doesn’t it’s an “act”, a performance), is a rebellious teen who smokes, drinks, has sex, and never listens. Children learn to police the behavior of other children in the same way and chide each other for “childishness”.
Adults, knowing how much shame is tied to “childishness”, use the prized compliment that is being treated as an adult as a way to manipulate children and further their own needs. Historical examples are Victorian and Edwardian books for boys (Gubar, 2009), or World War I propaganda (Andrew, 2018). In the context of sexual abuse, it is frequent for an adult to flatter a child by treating them “like an adult” (Winters, Jeglic, Kaylor, 2020). The constant sense of being degraded and not listened to by adults makes a child vulnerable to this type of manipulation; often being treated “like an adult” just means being treated like a person.
It is common in media, even media directed at children, to see characters being reduced to the role of babies and children as a punishment. It most often occurs with male characters, as a form of emasculation (being treated “like a child” by men was until very recently seen as normal for women). It’s also a common feature of political satire.
When children constantly watch the concept of the Child being used as an insult, it’s no wonder they want to set themselves apart from other children and act “grown”, but that too is punished by adults when it’s not done the “right” way. Children are punished for being “childish” and they are punished for acting “grown”. It’s exhausting.
Society has viewed children in very different ways throughout history, but the “Child” was always positioned as inferior to the “Adult”. The Child either only had value as a future adult, or it only had value for the joy it brought adults. The Child grows “up”, not down, or sideways, it attains a superior state with adulthood. Therefore, comparing someone to a child, a “not yet” person, is profoundly degrading. Good children are rewarded with adulthood, a person who is insulted by being called “a child” feels degraded because they were a “good” child: They earned their current status as adults. Now it is they who wield the rod, and they will fight anyone who implies they should be struck a few more times before having the right to.
Adultist language encourages children to view themselves as inferior and adults to constantly reaffirm their difference from children. Instead of calling someone “childish”, “ immature” or telling them they need to “grow up” other neutral terms should be used.
