Editorial: The spectacle of ‘tantruming toddler’: Reconfiguring child/hood(s) of the Capitalocene

Abstract

This Themed Edition emerged from a deep concern that we share regarding the recent growth in forms of intensified and virulent childism. We have been particularly struck by a specific form of childism that has circulated in popular culture, through myriad media outlets, that seeks to parody powerful male leaders as ‘tantruming toddlers’ in late Capitalism (e.g. Crump, 2021; Hyde, 2020). This was especially prevalent in media portrayals of Donald Trump during his presidency (Cavna, 2017). It seems that likening Trump’s abhorrent behaviour (selfish, unreasonable, angry, intolerant, insolent and intolerable) to that of a small child is the worst insult that can be waged against an adult man in a position of power. This is a phenomenon that stretches beyond the geopolitical context of the USA and has far reaching consequences. There are traces and examples of this pernicious form of childism in numerous other geopolitical contexts, across time and space (e.g. Alvares, 2020; Pesek, 2013). As such, it raises important considerations for childhood scholars concerned about the state of the world and the place of child/hood(s), both materially and discursively, at this particular moment. Such reductionist and grotesque portrayals of ‘child’ work to denigrate and limit ideas about child/hood within the public imagination and so actively silences other accounts of contemporary child/hood. This collection of critical childhood studies scholarship seeks to intervene by offering a range of alternative narratives that grapple with the ways in which the image of the child might be rethought as a means to directly challenge the notion that the misbehaving toddler somehow embodies and epitomizes hyper-capitalism.