Restricted Access

We may one day get our wish, and see a society where our public spaces are divided up between the adults and the children. If it comes to that, it will be done to shield kids against all those society believes capable of potentially harming them. We already see prohibited access to adults without children at certain public exhibitions (such as children's museums), and even prohibited access to all adults (parents included) at certain school functions (such as sporting events). Anyone who may say that increasing paranoia only affects children neglects to see the bi-directionality of the freedoms it places limits on--in this case, the freedom to move across generations.

To meet this paranoia over pedophiles being in arm's reach of children with further paranoia about the social wedge being formed between adults and children is like fighting fire with fire, but one can't help but feel this "cure" is worse or just as bad as the disease. If we were to come at this issue from a reasonable perspective, we'd see that for every child harmed by a co-existence with adults in the world as we know it, potentially millions of children would be deprived of adult interaction if we were to become a society that parsed out its adults from its children. If this can be determined wrong at this extreme, why can it be permitted in the routine of reality?

In our effort to create for children some kind of wholesome, fuzzy, cushioned existence, are we seeing the beginnings of a society where we have sealed them off from reality and the adults that inhabit it for some ill-conceived desire to protect children and preserve their ignorance? In denying an adult from participating in certain public events out of the fear that all those who are not parents are pedophiles, we have to be mindful of what message is really being imparted in that "wholesome, fuzzy, cushioned existence." How "wholesome" can it be when we've let the few perverts in our imaginations turn all ordinary people into pedophiles?

To tell you the truth, I'm all for promoting child safety under those terms. If schools (for instance) have a right to ban all adults (including parents) from certain events, then parents have a right to not let their children go to the event. They can all sit home and watch the vacant stadium on TV where the event would have been taking place, and know that "safety" has been maintained for the school's sake. One could even argue that it could promote safety by not even having the events at all. I declare that mission accomplished.

There's this fetishism over the harm that can potentially come upon our children, and an expectation that children are not going to be witness to, much less be harmed by our paranoia. Can one imagine a narrative where the child and adult are bravely holding hands against an onslaught of rigid security trying to pry them apart? Can one imagine a world where adults have their own approved walkways and stairwells and bathrooms, and children have their own respective rooms, walkways, tables in restaurants...etc.--where parents and children are tagged and separated as they are shoved along to their secluded spaces only to be reunited at the close of services? Can one imagine a future where children's only interaction with adults is via screen? If it is unthinkable in the extreme, then why is it permitted in the routine of reality?

How free can a society be where everywhere children are expected to gather, adults are to keep a five-hundred foot distance? How safe can children be in that society? When does trying to protect children from potential harm become mixed up with such ill-gotten ways of attaining personal alleviation for the anxiety of potential harm? Adults and children are residents of the same society, the same Earth, and we are not doing them or us any justice by dividing the "fuzzy reality" from the "grim reality." If adults weren't so obsessed with creating a dreamworld for children, they could spend some time fixing the grim reality, and if they allowed children to exist in that reality with them, they'd see the reason for fixing it.