In Love with a Child

We expect and demand of love eternal loyalty to one person, a binding social contract, something so definite, absolute, and flimsy, it's a wonder how anyone is successful at upholding its universal ideal. One man is supposed to devote all his love to one woman every day of his life, and she him, and their legal and social bond is supposed to even outlast time itself once the oath is given in marriage. Yet it can and is so easily all torn asunder the moment either one spreads their love to those outside the dyad. We only expect love to be shared among the human race in pairs, it seems, with eternal bonds of matrimony, and then forget to share the common two-minute kindness needed from us by everyone, every day, which requires no binding legal contract to make it legitimate. We trade real love for showy love.

This is to say that the western world upholds on the most high the hardest and most impossible form of love to maintain, and systematically ignores at best and abhors at worst its simplest and most common expressions. Grand spectacles of symbolic matrimony are performed at great cost to announce a man and woman's love for one another, no matter how genuine it is, but the one simple act of kindness on the street toward one's fellow man, woman, or child, goes unnoticed. And sometimes, particularly when it is extended toward children, it may even be fundamentally shamed.

What civilization loves instead is pomp and circumstance over genuine affection, costly displays of idealized romance over genuine devotion, and contractual obligation over personal loyalty. What civilization loves is the essence of the thing called love, all the fairy tale parts, without having the stomach for the whole fruit. If genuine love was the thing being valued in all this ceremony, then we wouldn't need to limit its expression to pairs of one man and one woman. If true love was the thing being valued, all genuine expressions of it shared between human beings would be celebrated equally. It wouldn't matter if the target of one's affections are men, women, boys, or girls. It wouldn't be so controversial for a man to admit to being in love with another man, or with a child, any more than it currently is if he is in love with a woman.

The question of sexuality in regards to the appropriateness of one's love interests is moot. Sexuality is a biological and social assignment, but even if was a choice, it would still be moot. Sex and love are two, often mutually exclusive, things--there can exist sex without love and love without sex, as John Lennon put it. If the object of your affections is a male human, and you're a male human, there is no reason why you can not be heterosexual at the same time. Likewise, if the object of your affections is a child, and you are an adult, there is no reason why you can not be a teleiophile, and be sexually attracted to other adults. The same formulations can be made for any combination of sexuality and love interest, so long as the affections are genuine. There is no reason then to assume that one's sexuality is determined by the characteristics of whom one chooses to love. Sometimes it is the case, but not all the time.

The act of being in love with a child is given such a negative connotation though in spite of this--even just expressing kindness and affection toward children will bring the word "pedophile" down upon you--as if expressing kindness and affection are to be reserved strictly for adults because children are unworthy of these niceties. Children are not deemed worthy of an adult's love, unless it is also bestowed with such honorific titles of circumstance like "mother's love" and (to a lesser extent these post-feminist days) "father's love." All others who may express or feel genuine love are treated to a private property sign or even mistakenly thought to be pedophiles. This is an arbitrary fence.

Kindness may be ignored and shamed among adults, and romantic love given such high and lofty worship, but the exact opposite is true for what is expected of children. In the same way that adult friends are to withhold their love for the child, so too is the child expected to withhold love for their benevolent friends, mentors, and non-parent associations. Children are taught that they may only express love in the form of deference to some official authority, unless that authority encourages otherwise, and this is more or less seen as a kindness. They are not even expected to express genuine love for anyone of any age for which there is not some biological necessity being fulfilled, but only platitudes of kindness--only what is expected from those "pure, perfect, angelic, little darlings." Adults view the close in age love relationship between two children or teens as they do the adult/child relationship--as threatening to the more hallowed "mother's love" or "father's love," and so they work to suppress it should it blossom beyond a mere crush.

It is true though that what we expect from children is different from love or affection, simply because kindness has its differences from love. Kindness describes a momentary act that is done for someone else's benefit, and this we teach children to strive for. Love describes an on-going appreciation of someone else's existence, similar to being a fan, or a follower. It may or may not drive someone to be kind toward the target individual, and that uncertainty is unbecoming of children. Just as sex and love are not always causally linked, love and kindness may not always be causally linked. As the old expression goes, "you only hurt the ones you love." Therefore, it is possible that the minute expression of love we expect from children and not from adults is indeed a purer form of love after all, as the nature of the romantic so-called "adult love" of celebrated matrimony often proves so fickle.

If that is the case, then why does the adult get the suspicious glare after the fact when he reciprocates a child's kindness? It is but an example of how love expression is indeed shackled to arbitrary social acceptability rather than genuine feeling. I suppose that's nothing we didn't already know.

Include the Kids

Society believes the best interaction between an adult and child ought to render the adult a designated mentor, care-taker, teacher, parent, doctor, or social worker of some sort, and the child a receptacle for their services. If the child is maintained, repaired, upgraded, or serviced appropriately by the designated individual, then society deems the partnership successful and they part ways. Children are not expected to do anything but absorb or allow rendered whatever service on them is being given, accept the upgrade for their sake, and carry on. In some instances, such as between a teacher and child, some dialogue or input from the child is necessary to complete the transaction, but that is in the context of their compulsory education. Society expects nothing from children for their own sake, even it also regards them to super-human heights of holiness for its sake.

I don't want to see the system crumble, I just want alternative (as in, non-bureaucratic) practices in child guidance become more socially acceptable and less of a target of scorn. This is to say, an ideal society would be one where so-called traditional, social, "cradle to grave" methods for bringing children up in the world coexist peacefully with individuals doing good works for others on their own volition. The only difference between the two is that the traditional structures treat children like potted plants who are just expected to sit there and receive their water and sunlight, and these Childlove "good works" practices I describe accept that a child, while being "protected" and "saved" and "taught" and "mentored," may also want to be the one giving, protecting, teaching, and mentoring sometimes, for a change.

Childlove does not expect a child to want to reciprocate the love that goes into them, because it expects nothing from children that one wouldn't expect from any other personal friend, but it won't stop them from reaching out if they desire it. Childlove is not out to "protect" or to "mentor" or to render a specific service in exchange for payment or some other motivation--the motivation for the Childlover is the protecting, is the mentoring, in and of itself. Children are not a means to an ends, they are an ends in and of themselves, and it takes a non-market based, non-bureaucratic, free individual in order to allow them to be. In this case, Childlove is about adults being there for children, but it's also about children being there for adults, or other children. It just requires the adult to be more honest and personal than they would be if they were fulfilling a professional service on behalf of the child--where their presence would just be a physical extension of their all-important title and nothing more.

Because kids know the difference. They know when you're there for them and when you're there because it's your job to be there. It doesn't necessarily have to affect their judgement of you, and certainly you can reach a child on a personal level even if it is your job to be there for them, but the quality of the interaction necessarily suffers from the compulsory, mandatory, or the "on behalf of X" context of the meeting. Officialdom always cuts the heart out of human interaction. If the child chooses their mentor and the mentor is not a fit with the child, or if the mentor chooses the child and the child isn't a fit, then the quality of the interaction suffers somewhat. If the child and the adult choose each other, or the child and the child choose each other, then the interaction is blessed for as long as it lasts. Kids don't want everything done for their sake, on their behalf, for their own good--nobody does--and will almost always see this kind of treatment as just another form of authority regardless of how friendly and "happy" it comes off. Some people will kill you with happiness, after all.

No. Kids don't want happy smiling faces telling them to sit still and receive the service against their will "for their own good," "on their behalf," or "for their sake." Kids are human beings too, and no human who hasn't been tampered with in some way will tacitly accept such condescension without either a flare of protest or silent withdrawal. Children shouldn't be expected to be any different. They want real people who are open and honest about their agendas. They want a person who can honestly answer the question, "Why the hell do you like working with kids?" If you answer with something along the lines of the "joy and wonder," then you've already lost all hope of connection, because the small ones won't get it and the older ones won't buy it.

A child is anything but "joy and wonder." A child is human--all that, the good, bad, and ugly. 

There are times when a child has to be a receptacle for services, just like anyone, but there should also be times when a child can be the one reaching out and reciprocating. In a relationship, human beings can say no if they are being infringed on by another. In a top-down interaction between "mentor" and "protege," there is no consent or dissent. If the kids can't be included, it is just another doctor's visit, it's just another timed test--it's not a relationship. Child-centrism is just as vile as adult-centrism, because tossing children into darkness is just as disgusting as blinding them in the spotlight.