What is a Child?

At first this is going to seem like such a huge question. After all, books have been written about what children are and what they mean for society for centuries. Laws have been crafted affording this entity its own set of limits and exceptions. Organizations have been instituted to care for and educate these entities. Industries have risen on providing for this entity's needs. So by these facts alone, we can already establish that the "child" is indeed an entity capable of having needs, and that other entities who have established this fact have taken it upon themselves to provide for them.

It would also follow that the child is an entity that, upon having said needs met by those who have taken it upon themselves to provide them, should then have its overall well being improved. Well-being here seems to mean nothing more than assisting in the maintenance of its self-sustaining necessities with the goal of prolonging its longevity. When it ceases to be, it would seem its well being has not been met satisfactorily.

So is that it? Children are just formless entities that have needs? When these needs are met, that necessarily means a child's well being is being provided for?

This is all we get when we dissect the thinking behind society's reaction to the existence of children. They become nothing more than entities requiring assistance to maintain their self-sustaining capacities by other entities who have taken it upon themselves to provide them. Intuitively, this is not a very good conception of children, for beyond the banal fundamentals of how the law regards what it considers to be a "minor" (essentially, a dead rock that requires certain exceptions and care dumped on it from above), what one conceives of on mention of "child" gives a little more muscle and form to that otherwise featureless lump. Not a lot, but we get a little closer to the hearts and bones. Children then also become whatever adults perceive them to be.

"Duh." That's what you're all thinking. But this is what a child is. This is all a child is. Everything else is a construction made by adults (organisms said to be in full maturation of their capacities). Adults have invented all kinds of ideas about what children are, from the pitifully fanciful to the crushingly realistic. But at the most basic, children aren't anything other than the above, by definition:

A child is a young human being.

Of course the definition of young human being is quite loaded, as it includes all the essential qualities of being "young" and being a "human," but beyond that, what else is a child? Were you going to say "children are innocent?" That is an adult construction placed onto children and other entities that adults group into that category. "Young" denotes the characteristics that seperate children from others of the species--namely, they are in a process of developing their capacities toward full maturation. "Human" simply designates them as an organism, a homo sapien, with all the properties that set humans apart from other organisms (such as "sapience").

Were you going to say "children are property of their parents?" Outside of the law, the very notion of property is one invented by humans, so while it is natural for human parents to take care of their young, the children do not cease being children once they are relieved from the custody, or property, of their parents (whether they be birth parents or legal guardians). Children are obviously something a little more concrete than that. Were you going to say "children are small?" That is also an adult construction, for it takes two adult eyes looking down onto a child to declare that such an entity is small. It's a social comparison. For instance, children are quite big when we compare them to the eyes of some animal, such as a squirrel.



In this end, a child is is just a combination of what one really is and what adults construct one to be. But that's another topic. Other than that, kids are just human, all too human.