On Loving Children, or Childish Things
A few remarks on the tendency to love childish things, considering the views of C. S. Lewis and Roger Scruton.
In a digital land, far far away from here (facebook), there was recently a discussion about a new building in our city. As part of his critique, some author used the term "childish" in a way that implied that there’s something negative about it. This phrasing caused discomfort among many readers and reminded me that we have a certain problem when it comes to children in the public sphere. To illustrate this issue, I find it worthwhile to begin with the strange case of C.S. Lewis and his attitude toward children.
As is well known, C.S. Lewis was a famous children's author. Beyond that, he was also an Anglican apologist, a thinker whose works produced both abominations and, at times, flashes of brilliance. In his work The Abolition of Man (Shalem, 2005), Lewis presents a cautious apology for universal wisdom, which he, in a somewhat Orientalist moment, refers to as “the Tao.” This Tao, derived from a Chinese philosophical tradition, was typically practiced by adults whose neo-Confucian duties were largely behind them, allowing them to focus on the pursuit of cosmic truth. Thus, the Tao represents a kind of wisdom underlying all things. In the first chapter of The Abolition of Man, Lewis interprets this wisdom as a form of naïve, universal moral realism accessible to anyone willing to open their heart to it.
For example, Lewis argues that those who know the Tao can understand that calling children charming or elderly people admirable is not merely an expression of parental or childish feelings in a given moment. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of a quality that demands a certain response from us, whether we choose to give it or not. He writes, "I myself do not enjoy the company of small children, but since I speak from within the Tao, I recognize in myself a defect on this matter—just as a man might recognize that he is tone-deaf or color-blind." This strange statement from a children's author is supported by his private correspondence: "In theory, I think one should love children, but in practice, I shy away from them" (letter to Arthur Greeves, 7/12/1935).
It's unsurprising for those familiar with Lewis’s apologetic writings that he sees this wisdom as aligning with Jesus’s famous sermon in Matthew 18, where children are described as being in a privileged position to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus teaches that we must humble ourselves like children to receive Him, and that welcoming a child in His name is akin to welcoming Christ Himself. The sermon is truly beautiful, and Lewis offers a detailed interpretation of it in his apologetic works. Yet, Lewis’s personal oddness remains. I call it oddness because over the years I’ve come to understand that my approach to children is entirely opposite to his: If there’s a small child around, I’d much rather spend time with them than with the adults. Yet, public displays of affection for children, and the shaping of public spaces to suit them, have always deeply repelled me.
Where, then, do I part ways with Lewis and, in my opinion, with the Christian-hypocritical attitude toward children?
Let’s take a step back to something I wrote earlier about kitsch. Kitsch, as I understand it, is not just a critical aesthetic category characterizing modernism in aesthetics but also a critical ethical and political category. As I’ve noted before, Roger Scruton provides an example that, to me, is the epitome of kitsch (Confessions of a Heretic, “Faking It”, 2016): the public celebration of Santa Claus. When small children love Santa, their feelings are innocent and pure. Their affection, in other words, is entirely genuine. But when adults love Santa, there’s good reason to believe they do not love him the way children do. They love loving him. But they don’t just love loving him—they love it because they are enacting a popular version of Kant’s universal aesthetics: since we assume that all people everywhere love Santa and expect this, we can deduce that loving Santa has universal validity. Put another way, they enjoy participating in the imagined community of Santa lovers. Scruton sharpens the point by quoting Milan Kundera: “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice it is to feel, along with all humanity, how nice it is to see children running on the grass!”
The peculiarity of Lewis is that he feels guilty about not being fully kitschy. He feels the demand of kitsch and yet cannot convince himself that being around children brings him joy. I want to propose that the correct approach is precisely the opposite. As a wonderful example, I’d point to Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) communities. Haredi culture, for all its flaws, is nonetheless an adult culture. Public buildings, institutions, and Haredi leisure time are designed for adults. It’s well known that you can’t accuse Haredi society of not loving children. Arguably, there’s no purer love of children anywhere in the world than the daily concern shown by a mother of seven. Yet this love does not become the object of mutual public nostalgia. There’s an understanding that children belong to the private sphere until they are mature enough to take part in the Torah study culture, which is distinctly adult.
It seems to me that the obsession with shaping public culture to appeal to children stems from a culture that has lost its self-confidence in what it has to offer adults. Such a culture views the love of children as something innocent and harmless, in contrast to the often painful conflicts that arise in adult culture. Participation in children's culture offers relief from spiritual tension, which is perceived as unbearable and undesirable. This is a culture of rest more than a culture of leisure.
As we’ve seen, this culture has little to do with authentic love of children but much to do with the desire to feel included in a general euphoria.
I hesitantly offer the following thought: Could it be that a children’s culture doesn’t stem from authentic love for children, but rather the opposite—it’s a sign of a satiated, tired culture? Could it be that the Haredi society, for example, doesn’t display this publicly because its central concern is not suited for children? Could it be that the Western global culture, which has brought the externalization of love for children to unprecedented heights, is closely linked to the declining birth rates that conservatives love to cite as a sign of advanced cultural decay?