CHAPTER 2
Childhood and Public Life REAFFIRMING BIOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS
Spencer E. Cubill
There may be many untold and misunderstood subplots to the history of childhood in Western societies (Synnott 1983), but the main story line is by now familiar. Before the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the young were absorbed into the world of adults once they had passed the age of five or seven (Arits 1960:329). With the subsequent spread of literacy and schooling, the privatization of family life, and the evolution and diffusion of courtly manners throughout European societies and their North American offspring, the biographical duration of childhood was gradually extended, the young were increasingly insulated from the affairs and concerns of their elders, and the psy- chological distance between children and adults grew (Aries 1960: 137-407; Elias 1939; Postman 1982). Despite sometimes fierce resistance, self-styled "child savers" from among the middle and upper classes eventually succeeded in making schooling compulsory for those under a specified age and in securing the passage of various forms of ostensively protective legislation such as laws prohibiting or restricting the paid employment of the young (Zelizer 1985). The economically unproductive and presumedly incompetent child now found in Western societies was thereby created. To some this is a story of the historically progressive subjugation of the young (Arits 1960) while for others it is a nightmarish tale of previous generations' abuse of children (DeMause 1974). Despite this continuing debate, the parable of childhood's history in Western societies has a moral that seems beyond question: contemporary conceptions of childhood and children are historical products that may well change in the future. Recognition of that moral has caused a number of casual observers and more serious students of contemporary social life some anxiety. They worry that, among other things, current fashions in children's clothing (Lurie 198 1:46), television (Meyerowitz 1985226-67; Postman 1982), and "egalitarian childrearing" (Winn 1983) are eroding the dividing line between childhood and adulthood that had charac- terized American society during the so-called "highwatermark" (Postman 1982:68) or "golden age of childhood' (Winn 1983:ll) of the past hundred years. Almost every- where they look in contemporary American society they see signs of an approaching "new Middle Ages" (Winn 1983) of an "adult-child'' (Postman 1982:99). However, these prophets of childhood's end have failed to look for such signs in
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some of the most obvious places. Although the story that historians of childhood tell us is based in part on information about the young's behavior, access to, and treatment by others in public places in the past, students of social life have paid only passing attention to comparable evidence about contemporary conceptions of childhood and children. The purpose of this paper is to fill that gap in our understanding of contem- porary childhood by focusing attention on the place of the young in the public life of contemporary American society. Drawing inspiration from the work of Durkheim and Goffman, I examine reports and observed instances of the young's participation, behavior, and treatment in public life for expressive evidence of contemporary Ameri- cans' collective conceptions of children and childhood. The signs that this examina- tion reveals point to a somewhat different conclusion from that reached by the prophets of childhood's end.
Social Facts and Public Life It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that Emile Durkheim provided the authoritative definition of what most students of social life still consider their distinc- tive enterprise-the study of "social facts." According to Durkheim ([ 18951 1964:3), that category of "facts" consists of "ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion." Of course, this characteriza- tion of social facts raises at least as many questions as it answers. What exactly is the character of the exteriority and the source of the coercive power of such facts? How can these exterior and constraining ways of acting, thinking and feeling be empirically identified and investigated? Although Durkheim was far from silent on these questions, his answers evolved over the course of his scholarly career (Parsons 1937; Stone and Farberman 1967). He initially maintained that a social fact could be recognized by either "the existence of some specific sanction" or "its diffusion in the group" (Durkheim [ 18951 1964: 10). Thus, legal codes served as Durkheim's empirical indicators of social facts in his early study of The Division ofLabor ([ 18931 1964) while statistical distributions did so in his study of Suicide ([ 18971 1966). However, later in his career Durkheim turned his attention to ritualized, behavioral expressions of collective ways of thinking and feel- ing. His own study of religious rites (Durkheim [1915] 1965) led him to conclude that the very existence, not to mention the coercive power, of social facts was the product of common actions of individuals who are assembled together. In his words, "collective ideas and sentiments are even possible only owing to these exterior move- ments which symbolize them" (Durkheim [1915] 1965:466). That, in turn, would seem to suggest that social facts are made visible and, therefore, available for study on those occasions when and in those places where the members of a society routinely assemble and expressively symbolize collective ideas and sentiments. Erving Goffman took this Durkheimian suggestion to its logical conclusion. Bor- rowing from Durkheim, Goffman (1983:9) observed that it was in face-to-face gather- ings and them alone that "we can fit a shape and dramatic form to matters that aren't otherwise palpable to the senses" such as "larger social structures" and, of particular
CHILDHOOD AND PUBLIC LIFE 17
interest in this context, "ideals regarding our various categories of persons." However, Goffman ([ 19551 1982) took this theme beyond where Durkheim had left it by recog- nizing that every social encounter has ritual elements. According to Goffman, the individuals who compose a society not only expressively rejuvenate collective ideas and sentiments, on special, celebrative occasions but also routinely reaffirm those social facts where and whenever they are in one another's presence. As his own analyses of behavior in public places convincingly demonstrate (Goffman 1963, 1971), micro- ecological metaphors, behavioral displays and other observable expressions of collec- tive ideas and sentiments are readily found in those "regions of a community" that are "freely accessible to members of that community" (Goffman 1963:9). Consistent with the study policy that Durkheim suggested and Goffman devel- oped, this paper examines children's participation in public life for insights into con- temporary Americans' conceptions of childhood and children. Over a two-year period, several research assistants and I spent over 300 hours observing young children in such public places as city streets, shopping malls, parks, restaurants, and laundromats at various locations in the northeastern United States. We visited such settings for the explicit purpose of observing children's public behavior and treatment and recorded our observations in fieldnotes. In addition, we occasionally made fieldnotes on chil- dren's public behavior and treatment that we observed in the course of our daily rounds. Both during and after the time of these observations, I continually reviewed our fieldnotes in relation to concerns reported in the popular press and contemporary folklore about children in public places. The following analysis of children's place in public life and discussion of collective conceptions of childhood and children in contemporary American society are products of those efforts.
The Public Lives of the Young
Whatever else it may be, the familiar tale of childhood's history in Western societies is a story of the sequestering of the young for what increasing numbers of their elders came to see as the young's own good. In the United States, for example, child labor and compulsory schooling laws enacted during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries effectively segregated the young from their elders for a large part of the day, week and year. Yet, as Nasaw (1985:117) reports, "unlike work, school let out at three o'clock, leaving the new working class students with free time in the afternoon." Many of these students, especially the boys, filled this free time hawking goods and services on the streets and frequenting a variety of public establishments. But economic and technological change was unkind to such youthful participants in public life. Young street entrepreneurs were soon confronted by overwhelming competition from home newspaper delivery, newsstands, permanent shoeshine stands, and other business en- terprises owned and operated by adults (Nasaw 1985). In addition, during the early part of the twentieth century, "railroads, streetcars and automobiles emerged as fiercer killers of children than communicable diseases" (Zelizer 1985:33), causing widespread anxiety about the young's safety in public places. Consequently, the young were grad- ually pushed off the streets of American towns and cities and into family households,
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schools, and other public settings-such as playgrounds-that were specifically de- signed for their use (Lofland 1973:76; Zelizer 198552). Perhaps because of this virtual banishment of the young from many public places, public accommodations were seldom designed with them in mind. Among other things, water fountains, toilets and public telephones were and still are built too high for young children to reach and for many older children to easily use.' American children's changing place in public life was thereby built right into the physical fea- tures of public places. If children ventured into public places at all, they inevitably required the assistance of a larger, more experienced person.
RESTRICTING PARTICIPATION
In comparison to their historical counterparts, at least in the lower and working classes, contemporary American children's access to public places and conveniences seems severely restricted. A study of 323 four to seven-year-olds conducted in 1975 found that only 16 percent of the interviewed children were "allowed to go further away than their own block" if not in the company of an adult caretaker (Boocock 1981:99). Children who lived in urban areas were most likely to be subject to such a restriction and many were even more constrained. For example, over half of the chil- dren who lived in East Harlem were "not allowed to go outside their own building or yard," as were nearly two-fifths of the more affluent Nay York children with Park Avenue addresses (Boocock 1981:99). Similarly, only 16 percent of the 764 eleven to twelve-year-olds from low and middle-income homes in Oakland, California, sur- veyed in the late 1970s had visited more than two nearby public places in the past year without adult supervision, and nearly 30 percent had visited none (Medrich et al. 1982:82).2 Since approximately 1979, popular concern about children's safety in public places has mushroomed. A series of highly publicized child abductions and murders, such as that of Adam Walsh in 1981, apparently convinced many Americans that children in public places faced a more ominous danger than moral temptation or accidental injury or death. Televised dramas, documentaries, and Congressional hear- ings helped to foster the impression that there was a virtual army of villainous adults stalking and preying upon children who dared to venture outside the protective for- tresses of home and school. Today, "The smiling faces of missing-presumably ab- ducted-youngsters peer out from grocery bags and utility bills, from fast-food cups, from congressional mail" (Spitzer 1986:18). It now often seems as if America, in the words of Adam Walsh's father, John, is "littered with mutilated, decapitated, raped and strangled children" (Spitzer 1986:20). Contemporary folktales or urban legends also fuel this fire of popular concern about children's safety in public places. For example, the modern horror legends of "the mutilated boy" and "the attempted abduction" have a similar theme. Either a young boy or an adolescent girl suddenly disappears from a department store or shop- ping mall. The missing child is then found in a public restroom either physically mutilated or in the process of being disguised by the abductors, who are preparing to
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sell her into some form of sexual slavery. As Brunvand (1 98480) observes, "hardly an urban center in the United States that is large enough to have suburbs and shopping centers has been free" of these modern horror legends. He reports that he has repeat- edly heard these legends from worried parents who name specific businesses in their community where the incident supposedly occurred: "Typical of many people, a mother . . . relaying a castrated boy story she heard in Milwaukee, wrote, 'I don't know if this is legend or fact-but I haven't let my 5-year-old son go in (to a shopping center restroom) alone yet"' (Brunvand 198483). Like this mother, many adults apparently take the moral of these urban legends quite seriously: children are not safe even in such morally benign and vehicle-free public places as department stores and shopping centers. The widespread impression that practically all public places expose children to the dangers of abduction, mutilation, and murder has proven remarkably resilient. Serious questions have recently been raised about the accuracy of frightening estimates of the number of American children who are abducted by strangers (see Best 1989), and journalists have repeatedly debunked the "attempted abduction" and "mutilated boy" legends (Brunvand 198478). Yet, it does not appear that popular concern about children's safety in public places has subsided appreciably because of the widespread publication of such information. Modern horror legends about children in public places continue to be told and believed, parents are still cautioned to vigilantly watch their children when in public places, and children are repeatedly warned not to talk to strangers. Regardless of whether the presumed dangers awaiting children who venture into public places are primarily real or imagined, it is the young who bear the burden of such popular fears. They are the ones whose access to and freedom of movement within public places are restricted as a result. For example, when it is not immediately obvious that an adult is accompanying a young child in a public place, the adults who are present almost always scan the surrounding setting in an apparent attempt to identify one of their kind as the child's caretaker. If that visual search is unsuccessful, one of the adults typically requests that the child identify her or his caretaker usually by asking: "Where's your mommy?"3 If the child is unable or unwilling to answer such questions then she or he is commonly detained until an adult caretaker can be located (see Cahill 1987:3 14). These somewhat extreme measures are seldom neces- sary, however. For the most part, young children in public places are not only accom- panied by an adult caretaker but their relationship to that adult is clearly displayed "to whom it may concern." An adult commonly has a firm grasp on one of their hands or else they are within easy reach of an adult whose eyes seldom wander from them for more than a few seconds. Moreover, in some public places, such immediately apparent expressions of the caretaker-child relationship are explicitly required as when signs on the entrance of some shops boldly announce that "children must stay with parents" or some similar message. While adults do tolerate the presence of older, school-age children who are not under the obvious supervision of an adult in many public places, it seldom appears as if they welcome it. Such children may not be subjected to interrogation and detention as are unaccompanied younger children, but they commonly do attract concerned if
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not suspicious glances from adults. Moreover, older children's excursions into public places are subject to a variety of temporal and spatial limitations. Some localities enforce curfews for those under a specified age, and almost all formally prohibit the young from entering taverns or attending the screening of movies or theatrical events judged unsuitable for their delicate sensibilities. Those under unspecified but com- monly understood ages are also informally barred from a number of other public establishments and events. Few American restaurants may advise potential patrons to "leave under fourteens and dogs at home" as do some British restaurants in The Good Food Guide (Greer 1984:3), but patrons of finer American restaurants implicitly know that they are expected to honor similar unspoken prohibitions. Clearly, neither young nor older, school-age children are allowed to freely or fully participate in the public life of contemporary American society.
ALLOCATING MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
Contemporary Americans' concern about children's physical and moral safety is not the only reason that they restrict the young's access to and freedom of movement in public places, however. As Goffman's (1963, 1971) analyses of behavior in public places demonstrate, public order is predicated on a large base of normative presupposi- tions and self-sustained restraints. Public actors routinely observe a complex code of conduct and attend to the observance of public etiquette as a deeply moral matter. Because they do so, public life is relatively orderly and predictable. Yet most adults, including the arbitrators of popular morality who offer their advice in the daily news- papers, apparently consider children, especially younger children, either too inexperi- enced to be aware of the implicit code of conduct that governs behavior in public places, incapable of exercising the degree of self-control necessary to uphold it, or both. For example, when the reader "Sick of Brats" writes "Dear Abby" to complain about "the noisy, screaming, bratty kids" who ruin meals at nice restaurants, Abby sympathizes with her but instructs, "don't blame the kids" (Van Buren 1986). Most adults would probably agree with Abby that children are not morally responsible for their disruptive or otherwise offensive public acts. However, someone must be held morally responsible if the orderliness and predictability of public life are to be main- tained. That, in turn, requires that children in public places be accompanied by some- one who is considered morally accountable. Because young children are not only considered in danger when in public places but a danger as well, the adult caretakers who are implicitly required to accompany them in public places are expected to do more than protect their charges from the dangers of public life. They are also expected to protect public order from the dangers of their charges' amoral ways, as the following observation illustrates: A man, a woman, an approximately seven-year-old boy and four-year- old girl are sitting on either side of a table in the dining car of a long distance passenger train. The two children gradually raise their voices until they can be heard throughout the dining car, but the accompanying adults make no attempt to quiet them. A woman sitting at the table directly across
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the aisle suddenly turns to the children and sternly requests: "Would you two keep it down? Christ!" She glares at the accompanying adults, but they studiously avoid looking in her direction until she turns her attention back to her meal. A few moments later, the young girl starts to raise her voice again, but this time the man sitting across from her reaches under the table, places a hand on one of her knees and shakes his head back and forth in the negative.
In addition to containing the children's disruption of public order, the woman sitting across the aisle from them also with her eyes subtly accused the accompanying adults of a dereliction of duty, and they apparently took that accusation to heart. At least the accompanying man quickly acted to prevent a reoccurrence of his charges' disruption of public order when one of the children subsequently threatened to do so. Given that young children's adult caretakers are held morally accountable for their charges' actions, children's disruptive or otherwise offensive public acts threaten more than public order. They also threaten what Goffman ([1955] 1982:5) termed the "face" or "positive social value a person effectively claims" of the children's accom- panying adult caretakers. In a featured newspaper article, entitled "The Tyranny of Toddlers," a staff writer warns parents of this danger.*
About the time you've settled back to wait for your entree, or just as the movie is kicking into gear, Junior-that child who looks so innocent in family portraits-will turn on you and wail. . . . Bowing to the stares . . . you will beat a hasty exit . . . and you will swear that Junior absolutely will not go out in public again for another 18 or so years (Campbell 1987:Dl).
Like the parent in this cautionary tale and the man in the preceding example, chil- dren's adult caretakers commonly do bow to others' stares when their charges violate public etiquette. To the extent that they are competent public actors who possess a defensive orientation toward saving their own face (Goffman [1955] 1982), they can be counted upon to prevent or at least contain their charges' disruptions of public order. Thus despite younger children's assumed incapacity to observe public etiquette, they often do pay a price for their disruptive or otherwise offensive public acts. Their adult caretakers often control them by physical fiat, threaten them with temporary exile from public life, and occasionally execute such threats, as the following observa- tion illustrates:
A man is inspecting a box in a large toy store while an approximately six- year-old and seven-year-old girl who are standing nearby engage in a heated argument. The man turns toward the girls and inquires: "How would you two like to go home RIGHT NOW?" In response, the girls loudly and simultaneously accuse one another of starting the argument. The man places the box back on the shelf, grabs a hand of each of the girls, and leads them toward an exit despite their pleas and protests.
It is as if young children in public places are on a kind of probation that their accom- panying caretakers are obliged to and commonly do enforce.
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Of course, young children's adult caretakers often do fail to prevent their charges from disrupting public order. Yet, as Goffman (1971:lOS) once observed, "[Iln the realm of public order it is not obedience and disobedience that are central, but occa- sions that give rise to remedial work of various kinds, especially the provision of corrective readings calculated to show that a possible offender actually had a right relation to the rules." It is also on such occasions that young children's adult caretakers most directly acknowledge their obligation to protect public order from their charges' presumedly amoral ways. For example, the following was observed in a discount de- partment store:
While a young woman is inspecting a rack of clothing, an approximately five-year-old boy who had been standing next to the young woman runs between the surrounding racks of clothing and collides with an elderly woman. The elderly woman loudly exclaims: "OH, MY LORD!" The young woman quickly comes to the scene of the accident and remarks: "Oh, I'm sorry about that. B-, come over here right now." The elderly woman responds: "That's all right. He just frightened me."
Note that in this remedial interchange (Goffman 1971:95-187) it is "I" not "he" who is "sorry about that." The young woman thereby implicitly acknowledged that the collision was not the boy's but her responsibility and that she did not take lightly her failure to prevent his disruptive act. In addition to preventing their charges from disrupting public order and attempt- ing to restore it when they fail to do so, children's caretakers also apparently attempt to reduce the future reoccurrence of their charges' disruptive or otherwise offensive public acts. For example, they often respond to their charges' violations of public etiquette with rule statements such as "it's not polite to stare"; prompts such as "tell the lady you're sorry"; and priming moves such as "what do you say?" (Cahill 1987). These responses are obviously addressed to the offending child, but they also seem designed for those who may have witnessed the child's delict. Like such admonitions as "you know you're not supposed to do that," these common responses to children's violations of public etiquette display to the audience-at-large that the offending child's caretaker is a morally responsible public actor even though her or his charge is not yet. Indeed, those who witness such attempts to teach children about public etiquette sometimes encourage the caretaker by smiling in apparent appreciation of her or his efforts. And, regardless of whether the primary concern of children's caretakers is reducing the future reoccurrence of their charges' violations of public etiquette or saving face, in most cases the eventual effect of their common responses to children's disruptive or otherwise offensive public acts is to transform the young into morally responsible, public actors (Cahill 1987). From children's perspective, on the other hand, their public caretakers' rule state- ments, prompts, and priming moves are behavioral demands that must be met. This is apparently part of the price they are made to pay for being temporarily relieved of moral responsibility for their public acts. Any excursion into a public place can quickly turn into an arduous training exercise complete with formal instruction, practice drills, and exams. While this may be an effective method of teaching the uninitiated what
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morally responsible public actors must know and do, there is also a more immediate lesson. When in public places, the young always must be mindful of the overwhelming dominance and dictates of their ever watchful elders. And that is only part of the burden that children must bear when in public places. On crowded public transport vehicles and in supermarket check-out queues, adults commonly use nearby children as a temporary source of amusement to break the monotony of their ride or wait. They often visually admire and sometimes smile, wink and make faces at a nearby child in an apparent attempt to provoke some response from her or him. They may even question such a child or otherwise attempt to lure her or him into conversation. All this attention may seem quite innocent, but it just as clearly denies children the right to be let alone when in public places-a right children are continually instructed and encouraged to grant adults. In Durkheimian language, it is just such exterior movements that symbolize contemporary Americans' collective conception of children.
APPORTIONING THE COLLECTIVE MANA
As Goffman (119561 1982:47) once observed, Durkheim's (1915:273-308) d' ISCUS- sion of the soul suggests that "the individual's personality can be seen as one appor- tionment of the collective mana"-the sanctifying energy arising from social existence. Goffman ([1956] 1982, 1971) also convincingly demonstrated that it was through such acts of deference or interpersonal rituals as honoring one another's right to be let alone that public actors expressively acknowledge each other's possession of a quota of mana. Yet, as the preceding suggests, the collective mana in contemporary American society is not expressively distributed in equal proportions among our various catego- ries of persons. To borrow from Goffman (1963:126), the young seem to be consid- ered so meager in sacred value that it is thought that they have nothing to lose through engagement, and hence can be engaged at will. Indeed, the young's occasional protests against such demeaning treatment, if not summarily dismissed, merely invite further humiliation, as the following observation illustrates:
An approximately four-year-old boy is holding on to a pant leg of a man in a checkout queue at a discount department store. While they wait, the woman immediately behind the man in the queue makes faces at the boy. He calmly looks up at her for a few moments and then pointedly sticks out his tongue. At that very moment, the man turns his head and sharply in- quires: "What are you doing?" The boy replies: "Daddy, she's making faces at me." The man informs the boy that "she was only joking around' and instructs him to "tell the lady you're sorry." The boy firrows his brow and purses his lips but complies.
For the young, this is the justice of public life. Of course, individuals must "show proper demeanor in order to warrant deferen- tial treatment" (Goffman [1956] 1982:83), and young children in public places com- monly fail to do so. They often seem unconcerned with the sorry state of their personal
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appearance, talk too loud, sometimes allow themselves to be overcome with situation- ally inappropriate emotions, and expose themselves to such profaning substances as previously used chewing gum. Such acts are undoubtedly treated as symptomatic of their performer's lack of collective mana regardless of her or his age, but when com- mitted by the young they are apparently treated as evidence that the entire category "children" has not yet acquired a quota of mana. Thus, regardless of whether a partic- ular child shows proper demeanor when in a public place, she or he is unlikely to receive the deference from adults that she or he is expected to give them. However, children do reap benefits from their many public trials and tribulations, including gradual emancipation from direct adult supervision when in public places. Once they demonstrate an awareness of and willingness to observe public etiquette, they are allowed to sometimes participate in public life as individuals, albeit not full- fledged ones. Despite their freedom from direct adult supervision, they still remain on a kind of probation that almost any adult can enforce, as the following illustrates: An approximately nine-year-old and eight-year-old boy are looking at the overhead menu in a fast-food restaurant and discussing the offerings. The younger of the two suddenly exclaims "Wait," turns, and starts to run toward an exit only to collide with a woman. The woman immediately grabs the boy's shoulders and informs him that "you shouldn't run." Like this boy, older, school-age children in public places may be subjected to repri- mands from total strangers before they even have an opportunity to provide a correc- tive reading for the act in question. Given that almost any adult may quickly bring them back into line with public etiquette whenever they step out of line, they are made to walk a behavioral tightrope when in public places. Unlike adults, they are seldom given the benefit of doubt, and, unlike younger children, they are not relieved of moral responsibility for their acts. In an important respect, then, public places are more hostile social environments for older, school-age children than for younger children. For example, a few minutes after the pedestrian collision reported above, an approximately four-year-old girl col- lided with another woman in the same fast-food restaurant. However, unlike the perpetrator of the earlier collision, the young girl was not reprimanded. Instead, the victim of the collision pleasantly remarked: "Oh, aren't you adorable." It is doubtful that she would have found an older child who committed a similar offense adorable. At least the woman in the preceding example did not. Although adults grant the young a kind of learner's permit in public etiquette which entitles them to considerable moral license, the latter apparently expires long before the former. Yet, despite holding older, school-age children morally responsible for observing public etiquette, adults apparently do not trust them to do so. Groups of preadoles- cents and adolescents in public places who are not under the obvious supervision of an adult inevitably attract suspicious glances from adults and, in many shopping malls, the undivided attention of security officers. For example, the following occurred in a shopping mall on a Friday evening: A number of adults are standing and talking to one another outside the entrance to a movie theater and near to where a group of adolescents have
CHILDHOOD AND PUBLIC LIFE 25
congregated. A uniformed security officer approaches and instructs the ado- lescents to move away from the theater entrance. Although some of the adolescents briefly protest, they all eventually comply with the officer's command. The officer then turns toward the adults, smiles and shakes his head before leaving to follow the departing adolescents. The adults remain, still partially blocking the theater entrance. As this example suggests, the very presence of groups of preadolescents or adolescents in a public place is apparently considered a potential threat to public order. Of course, older, school-age children do give adults some reason to doubt their loyalty to the code of conduct that governs behavior in public places. They sometimes vocally or electronically jam the airwaves of public places and, when in groups, may defiantly block pedestrian thoroughfares, stare, and verbally harass selected passersby. However, such pointedly disruptive and offensive acts probably are not symptoms of incomplete training in public etiquette as some adults apparently believe. Rather, they seem to be "meaningful nonadherences" (Goffman 1971:61) through which the young convey something about "their relation to the adult world" (Goffman 1963:223), and adults are at least as responsible as the young for the character of that relation. As previously suggested, the expressive relationship between the young and their elders in public places is one of asymmetrical deference. Even older, school-age chil- dren are under constant surveillance when in public places, expected to relinquish such territories as previously claimed seats to their elders, and are often talked about as if absent. For example, the following was observed in a shopping mall.
An approximately ten-year-old boy is sitting on a bench between two men. While the boy is telling one of the men about the recent success of his little league baseball team, the other man leans back, interrupts the boy, and addresses the second man in a modulated voice as if to indicate that his remarks were not for the boy's ears. The boy gradually leans forward until his elbows are resting on his knees while the men discuss his promise as a baseball player.
Adults may demand that older children act like morally responsible public actors but, in many respects, treat them as mere children. Thus, older children may not so much be alien to but alienated from the code of conduct that governs behavior in public places and the well-demeaned adults who sustain it. Goffman (1963:84) once described the young's lot in public life as "nonperson treatment," but that characterization glosses over important differences between the treatment of younger and older children. Neither is shown the deference due full- fledged persons, but their lot in public life is not the same. While adults treat younger children in public places as innocent, endearing yet sometimes exasperating incompe- tents, they treat older children as unengaging and frightfully undisciplined rogues. Among other things, the very violations of public etiquette that adults often find amusing when committed by younger children are treated as dangerous moral failings when the transgressor is a few years older. Thus, in public places, the young are expressively divided into two distinct categories of beings both of which are treated
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differently from adults. To borrow from Parsons (1942:89), the age lines dividing these categories of persons may not be rigidly specific, but that does not lessen their significance as those so categorized are routinely reminded when in public places.
The Facticity of Biographical Divisions
Whatever else may be happening with and to the young in contemporary American society, the dividing line between childhood and adulthood is still expressively drawn in public places with unmistakable clarity. The young may now dress more like their elders than in the recent past (Bush and London 1960) and have access through electronic media of communication to information that their elders once jealously guarded from them (Meyerowitz 1985). Yet, in public places we continue routinely to reaffirm the dividing lines between adulthood and both early and later childhood through a variety of expressive acts. Those seemingly automatic, fleeting acts may seem relatively insignificant, but they are not. In Goffman's (1956:91) words, "the gestures which we sometimes call empty are perhaps in fact the hllest things of all." Indeed, it is through such gestures that we fill collective conceptions of our various categories of persons with behavioral content, thereby making them palpable to the senses and generating evidential warrants for that sorting of persons. For example, by restricting their freedom of movement, forgiving them their offensive acts, and assaulting them with uninvited looks and words, adults expressively define young children as hopelessly but endearingly incompetent social creatures. While young children clearly are inexperienced public actors, they may be capable of much more than adults apparently believe that they are (Joffe 1973:116). And if young children do understand the expressive significance of their treatment in public places, then they may have good reasons ro behaviorally confirm adults' conception of them. They may knowingly threaten to disrupt public order so as to extract conces- sions from their adult caretakers, because they have so little to lose, and cynically enact incompetence in order to placate and manipulate adults. Thus, younger children may well cooperate with adults in expressively reproducing the "social facticity" of early childhood as a distinctive biographical stage populated by untamed and temporarily untamable beings. Similarly, older, school-age children also have good reasons to behaviorally con- firm adults' unflattering conception of their kind. While implicitly requiring such children to observe public etiquette, adults seldom reciprocate the deference that they expect those children to accord them. Thus, public places are environments where it is difficult for older, school-age children ro have viable selves. They can not rely on adults for the deference that would complete the picture of a complete person of which they can paint only certain parts by acting with proper demeanor (Goffman [ 19561 1982:84). Yet, by pointedly violating their tormentors' injunctions, they can demonstrate-to themselves if not to one anorher-that they have some selfhood and personal autonomy (Goffman 1961:31 4). Of course, they thereby also inadvertently
CHILDHOOD AND PUBLIC LIFE 27
cooperate with adults in expressively reproducing later childhood as a distinctive bio- graphical stage populated by irresponsible malcontents. Moreover, the dividing lines between adulthood and both early and later child- hood that both the young and their elders expressively reaffirm in public places stretch far beyond those settings in which they are routinely drawn. The characteristically asymmetrical and often strained relationship between the young and their elders in public places further constricts the already narrow channels of communication be- tween them that results from their continued if not increasing segregation from one another at other times and in other places. Thus, the young and their elders are unlikely to become more alike because of their access to similar information and comparable goods as the prophets of childhood's end assume. Information and objects are interpreted, used, and thereby collectively defined by those among whom commu- nication freely flows. When communication between persons is restricted as it is be- tween adults and children in contemporary American society, those persons tend to interpret, use, and define information and objects differently. The result in contempo- rary American society of such restricted communication is distinctive children's sub- cultures of which adults are only vaguely aware (Fine 1987:124-84). In turn, the consequent lack of understanding among adults of the young's seemingly exotic and sometimes appalling ways is a continual reminder of the young's difference from adults, thereby fortifying the dividing line between childhood and adulthood that is expressively drawn in public places. While the prophets of childhoods end may yet prove prescient, at present the dividing line between childhood and adulthood continues to be reproduced in public places through a variety of exterior movements that symbolize it. Perhaps the actual source of the anxiety of those prophets and their many converts is not the claimed erosion of the dividing line between childhood and adulthood but uncertainty and fear about what may be happening on the young's side of that divide. Yet, the young's failure to confirm their elders' romantic images of childish joy and innocence does not necessarily portend that the end of childhood is at hand. At least in contemporary American society the young and their elders continue to be divided by an expressive barrier that only a few are able to scale. For the overwhelming majority of the young, the dividing line between childhood and adulthood remains an external and constrain- ing social fact of no small consequence in their lives.
Notes This chapter is reprinted from Social Problems, Vol. 37, No. 3, August 1990, pp. 390-402. 0 1990 by the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Used by permission. 1. As Pogrebin (1983:47) suggests, recent efforts to construct public accommodations ac- cessible to handicapped adults may have the unintended consequence of making life easier for children in public places. 2. In apparent contrast to the working-class students of early twentieth century America, nearly three-quarters of these more contemporary lower and working-class students re- ported that they routinely came straight home after school, and only 15 percent reported working outside the home on a regular basis (Medrich et al. 1982)
28 SPENCER E. CAHILL
3. All four of the unaccompanied young children that we observed in public places were asked about their mother's and not their father's location. This would seem to suggest that mothers are still collectively considered more responsible for children's safety and actions in public places than are fathers. 4. I am indebted to Eleanor Lyon for bringing this article to my attention.