| This dissertation explores how U.S. jurisprudence has participated in the cultural construction of ideas of childhood and adulthood through its determinations of who is a child and who is an adult. Case studies on the prosecution of juveniles as adults, the death penalty for minors, statutory rape laws and youth curfews illustrate where and how the law has established the boundary between childhood and adulthood in the last twenty-five years. In the context of these particular issues, lawmakers and the courts have employed varying ages whereby individuals qualify for certain aspects of adulthood. These reflect a decided contestation over an exact age when childhood ends and adulthood begins. Despite the absence of any agreement on the boundary between childhood and adulthood, the law relies almost exclusively on a concept of "the child", with the defining characteristics of passivity, innocence and dependence, as a guide for distinguishing child from adult. This ideal of the child also represents a decidedly white, middle class notion of what it means to be a child with those that do not conform, or "other" people's children, quickly removed from the category in order to maintain its integrity. The laws in these case studies infused with the understanding of children as innocent, passive and dependent also indicate a kind of "performance" of childhood. If one can demonstrate the required qualities of being a child, then one will be deemed a child, culturally and legally. Perhaps it is not chronology that determines the status child but a performance that embodies what it means to be a child. Its about how to "act your age". Ultimately, the combined effect of these laws regulating childhood and relating what it means to be a child function to help guide children through the dangerous passage to adulthood. The goal is to not simply to teach children how to be children but to produce adults that will know their place and act accordingly in maintaining the current power arrangements in this society. |
