Childism and the discourses about childhood present in a Brazilian Childfree Facebook page


Luiza Mattos Jobim da Costa, Brock University

According to Pierce and Allen (1975) and Young-Bruehl (2012), childism is defined as prejudice against children, following the logic of other structural, central forms of oppression such as sexism, racism, and antisemitism. Research in the field of sociology often approaches different forms of oppression, and, in the sociology of childhood, to which this work wishes to contribute, the oppression against children has been an object of research for a number of years. However, while other forms of oppression have well-established concepts to describe them, such as racism or sexism, the oppression against children does not. Childism has been an object of discussion, but still not enough attention is given to it and the need to have it as a tool for research in sociology. I hope to contribute to the field of the sociology of childhood by adding to the discussion on childism and hopefully helping in the process of continuing and deepen this conversation. This study intends to challenge that insufficiency, as well as investigate the occurrence of childist discourses in the Facebook page “Childfree Brasil”, which gathers Brazilian people who have chosen not to have children. Although being childfree does not mean being oppressive towards children, previous visits to the page showed that there are childist discourses present in the posts and comments in the page. As one step forward into understanding childism and its underpinnings, this study seeks to investigate some of the discussions present in the Facebook page “Childfree Brasil” in order to identify common childist discourses and their sociological foundations. I seek to find out what the discourses about children used by people who engage on the Facebook page “Childfree Brasil” are and how they may produce and simultaneously reflect childism. To analyse the data, I intend to use the concept of discourse(s) in a Foucauldian sense, meaning that words and language do not only describe the world, but constitute it. Discourses, according to Foucault (1972), are “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (p. 54). However, discourses are also formed by these objects, meaning that discourses reflect and simultaneously build the dominant ideology (Foucault, 1986). This is a qualitative research project. I look into posts from 2022 that appear when searching the word “hate” (in Portuguese) in the page “Childfree Brasil” on Facebook, as well as the comments under them. The Facebook page “Childfree Brasil” is not restricted, therefore the posts and comments made on it are open for any person to see. This choice was made in order to facilitate access to data, as private Facebook groups would require further ethical questioning and discussion. Data collected in the Facebook page is organized according to themes, which are identified with the help of the software Quirkos. The most common topics or themes identified and the discourses attached to them are then analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis. According to Van Dijk (2001), “Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (p. 352). Using this approach allows me to analyse the discourses present in the page through a critical lens, which denies neutrality. Results so far have shown that discourses found in the page Childfree Brasil in posts from 2022 found searching the word “hate” majorly reflect, reproduce, and produce childist discourses that are heavily connected to the idea of children as the possession and sole responsibility of parents. Children are, in this way, not seen as agentic participants in society, but passive beings who should be under their parents’ control. Some of the main ideas found are related to criticism of the concept of caring for children collectively and an individualization of the responsibility for reproducing.

This paper will be presented at the following session: