Talk:Fear of children

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Old talk
STRONG KEEP No Reasons are provided for Deletion. This is a valid article on a irrational fear. I am removing the Deletion Tags

Theowannabe 01:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Chip
 * Please never do this again. This is against wikipedia rules; see WP:AFD. `'mikka 03:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Poorly written
And poorly referenced. This article needs work.

"As mentioned above, social service, human rights, and social justice organizations have been tackling the fear of children for dozens of years" WTF? Where is the reference? I don't believe any of these types organizations primarily see themselves as tackling "pedophobia" at all.

Where is the description (and refs.) to do with obsessive parenting and overprotection? Of the terror of pedophilia? Pedophobia relates to a fear of all things concerning childhood, including a terror of childhood sexuality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.131.102.6 (talk) 15:00, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Pedophobia: fear of pedophiles? (as in homophobia: fear of homosexuals)
Does anyone see a dichotomy here? If "homo" is used to mean homosexual, (and it's only meant "man" in strictly scientific language) and "pedo" is used to mean pedophile, then why doesn't pedophobia mean the fear of pedophiles or pedophilia, wheras homophobia is the fear of homosexuals and homosexuality? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.77.33.87 (talk) 02:44, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Pedophobia or pedaphobia?
A pedophobia is a fear of feet; hence why pedestrian and pedophobia have the same root. If I recall correctly, peda comes from the greek word paidi, which means child. This is why the term pediatrician cites its roots while this article gives no mention of it. This article should use the term pediaphobia, as it describes a fear of children and not a fear of feet. I propose that this article be renamed to pedaphobia, that the new pedaphobia article states that pedofile has been popularly misstated in place of pedafile and that a pedophobia article be made stating that pedophobia is a fear of feet and not children, despite the widespread misusage of the term's foot that I am told started in the 1970s with the term pedofile being used in place of pedafile. Shining Arcanine 02:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That is a compelling statement, and I thoroughly understand - and agree with - what you've written. However, it is not within the jurisdiction of Wikipedia to change the vernacular. As the citations in the article detail, the term pedophobia is what is in common usage, supported through an established cannon. I urge you to find sources that support your assertion, and then make adjustments accordingly. However, in the interest of maintaining encyclopedic scrutiny, I will contest any unsupported statements or radical departures from the current content. - Freechild 16:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The "correctest" term would probably be paedophobia as paedophilia; however, as the segment ae is often replaced in American English with e, pedophobia should be acceptable in regions where American English spellings are preferred. I have also seen pediophobia (which also means "fear of dolls" ) used and even paediphobia. All that said, however, the most commonly used word seems to be paedophobia/pedophobia and I've still yet to see pediaphobia used. D 4 g 0 t h u r  10:36, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Pedophobia or "Fear of children?"
Would this article be better titled "Fear of children", similar to Fear of childbirth, for which the Greek word is "Tokophobia"? Would it be better situated than using either pedo- or pedaphoia? - Freechild 22:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Opposing school of thought?
I'm not sure what this would be called; not a fear of children as much as a feeling of disenfranchisement for adults in favor of a preference for children. Examples include the seeming ad nauseum amount of non-profit organizations who fund specific child-related causes, children's cancer, children's burns, children with autism. The idea is that on one's eighteenth birthday, there is a sharp decrease in social concern for your wellbeing. Other potential examples include cultural aversion to abortion but not to capital punishment, or a much stronger aversion to the murder or abuse of a child than to that of an adult. Popular culture has made some commentary on this subject, see George Carlin's "Fuck the Children" routine for an example. I'm asking for more examples of this as an established school of thought, a name for the idea, etc. Malenkylizards 19:37, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The article on Ageism includes the following definition for jeunism: The tendency to prefer young people over older people. However, there is little written on that topic, in spite of Mr. Carlin's rant. That article would be better situated for your argument than this one. For other articles related to this topic, I would suggest you see Youth. - Freechild 21:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Movement from Pedophobia
I moved this article from its previous location because of an ongoing conversation on its talk page regarding the disagreement scholars have over what the title of the fear is, and paying attention to Plain English. - Freechild 06:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks to User:Rory096 for teaching me about the "move" tab above after I did this. Sorry to have created more work! - Freechild 06:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Should the title be "phobia of children"? --Yejianfei (talk) 02:37, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Ephebophilia not pedophilia
I changed the part about "R. Kelly's pedophilia" to "R. Kelly's ephebophilia". Pedophilia is a sexual attraction towards prepubescent children, ephebophilia is a sexual attraction towards adolescents. While the general public tends to confuse the two, considering that here at Wikipedia we have an article about ephebophilia and wish to publish accurate and unbiased information, things like that need to be corrected. Aoa8212 (talk) 12:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

merge Pediophobia
Fear of children and Pediophobia are about the same thing. They should be merged. Zodon (talk) 06:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * When you say "about the same thing" do you mean that they address the same topic, or that they are approximately equivalent?  Either way, it seems like pediophobia is more about the dolls (and robots?) than about live children.  The two topics seem related but different, and I personally would not merge them. 75.170.62.150 (talk) 15:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The article on pediophobia has a much weaker citation base than fear of children, and appears to be a weakly studied phobia. As the reliable sources in this article illustrate, fear of children is a widespread phenomenon that is being addressed in a variety of literature and fields. If anything, pediophobia should be deleted, not merged. • Freechild   'sup?   16:21, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the merger proposal since it is almost two months old and the only feedback is in opposition. • Freechild   'sup?   16:23, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Needs some work
Article needs some work I think. One thing that confused me (and may confuse readers) is that "pedophobia" is apparently a term with two distinct meanings: a psychiatric medical condition, and a political ideology.

Should "Pedophobia" (a medical condition) and "Fear of young people" (a kind of ideology) be two separate articles maybe? They're pretty different things. I don't think so, because the "pedophobia" is used for both. But I do think that we need distinct sections to clarify the difference, and to spell out the two different meanings right up front. The medical-condition section is going to be much shorter, it looks.

Then we can vet the refs and look at tweaking the text in places where clarity can be improved, if any. Herostratus (talk) 07:54, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Move?
I also wonder if the name of the article might be better as "Pedophobia"? It used to be called this at one time. Herostratus (talk)


 * See below for another option. Biogeographist (talk) 18:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Lede, sections
The current lede is

"Fear of children, fear of infants or fear of childhood is alternatively called pedophobia (American English), paedophobia or pediaphobia. Other age-focused fears are ephebiphobia and gerontophobia. Recognised outcomes of pedophobia include paternalism, adultism, and by extension, ageism."

I'm thinking that something like this might be better:

"Pedophobia (also paedophobia or pediaphobia) is term used to describe two distinct conditions: 1) A personal medical condition, an unreasonable fear of children. 2) An personal or social perspective encompassing a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward youths (which can include teens and young adults as well as children)."

Then essentially two sections, "Medical" and "Social", or something like that. (The stuff about ephebiphobia and gerontophobia and paternalism, adultism, and ageism can go in the body of the article, doesn't need to be in the lede). (I dunno about "ephebiphobia" being a separate term. It is if people use it. Our first ref tho is "Fear of teenagers is growing in Britain, study warns".... "it appears that an aversion to young people, or "paedophobia" so here a least the person is using "paedophobia" to mean fear/aversion to teens, and if that's how the term is used.... we'll see when we vet the refs. Herostratus (talk) 08:31, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Split with disambiguation page
What about splitting this article into two articles: Fear of children and Discrimination against children (see also: Discrimination against girls in India) with Pedophobia as a disambiguation page listing both? Biogeographist (talk) 18:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)


 * That sounds like part of a good solution. 120.136.5.96 (talk) 04:55, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, this sounds like a good start, let's do this. Now, the actual name of articles isn't all that important as long as the proper redirects are in place, but it is good to get it right. I'm thinking of article titles something maybe like this?
 * Pedophobia, the disambiguation page. "fear of children" also redirects here. The page contains two main links:
 * Pedophobia (psychology) -- a short article with the medical stuff
 * Discrimination against children -- the political/social stuff
 * Some minor questions are whether or not "Pedophobia" should be a primary topic, going directly to the info on the medical stuff. I don't think so, but whatever. "Fear of children" could redirect directly to "Pedophobia (psychology)". I don't think so, but doesn't much matter, whatever. "Pedophobia (psychology)" should maybe be called "Pedophobia (medical)" or "Pedophobia (disorder)" or whatever. I don't know or much care. "Pedophobia", the disambig page could also include pointers to "Pediophobia" and "Podophobia" and "Pedophilia" and whatever else people might be looking for. Herostratus (talk) 22:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I support the creation of Pedophobia (disambiguation). I think that for the time being, we shouldn't have a primary topic, as the question is still up for debate. I also support the inclusion of pointers
 * I propose the creation of Pedophobia (anxiety disorder) and support Discrimination against children. 120.136.5.96 (talk) 09:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that Pedophobia should be a disambiguation page, not a redirect to the disorder. Pedophobia (anxiety disorder) looks OK to me. It can always be renamed later if there is a good reason to rename it. Biogeographist (talk) 13:28, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * See WP:NEO. Just stick with the WP:Precise/clear title of "fear of children." Titles like "Pedophobia (psychology)," "Pedophobia (medical)" or "Pedophobia (disorder)" would need WP:MEDRS-complaint sourcing anyway. This is a social topic significantly more than it is a medical topic, just like homophobia is. Not sure why splits are being proposed. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:35, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you any sources that backup your claim that "pedophobia" is a neologism? There is no such thing as complaint sourcing on in WP:MEDRS, so I have no idea what you are saying there.
 * The use of the word pedophobia to refer to the disorder predates the social use be decades if not at least by a century. For a start, this article is very clearly about the disorder, as can be seen from the lede, which predates the sections on the social side. Even if the majority of the article addresses the social perspective, then the case for splitting remains. Have you actually read the comments here? If you have, then it should be clear that a split is being proposed because the article is confusing the two concepts implying that inclusive. 120.136.5.96 (talk) 13:02, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You stated, "There is no such thing as complaint sourcing on in WP:MEDRS, so I have no idea what you are saying there." Eh? "Complaint" was a typo. I meant "compliant." In addition to being a social topic, this is psychology topic, as made clear by the WikiProject Psychology tag at the top of this talk page, if not parts of the article itself. Because it's a psychology topic, it should adhere to the WP:MEDRS guideline. For the psychological aspects anyway. As for "the social side," see WP:MEDSECTIONS. We include society and culture sections in our medical articles. Do you have any WP:Reliable sources supporting the splits you or others are suggesting? WP:POVFORK states, "POV forks generally arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a 'POV fork' of the first, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies. The generally accepted policy is that all facts and major points of view on a certain subject should be treated in one article. As Wikipedia does 'not' view article forking as an acceptable solution to disagreements between contributors, such forks may be merged, or nominated for deletion." There are parts in this article, such as the "Voluntary Childless Parents or Childfree Individuals" section, that should be cut due to being WP:Synthesis and/or off-topic. Cutting those parts would be a start. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:50, 18 December 2018 (UTC) Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2018 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) There was a typo above: "complaint" should have been "compliant", hence the confusion in the subsequent comment. I agree with with about the need for WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing about the disorder. It would help if someone would first clean up this article, more clearly differentiating between the different subjects based on references to reliable sources, both secondary and tertiary, and making sure to include reliable medical/psychological sources about the disorder. Complete references including page numbers are important. The current version of the article references Abnormal Psychology by Kring et al. (10th edition, 2006) but doesn't include page numbers, which impedes verification. I checked the 12th edition (2012) of Abnormal Psychology by Kring et al. (but the most recent edition is the 14th, 2018), and what that book says doesn't support the idea that the disorder would be notable enough for a separate article; Kring et al. (2012) list pedophobia in Table 6.2: Names of Highly Unlikely Phobias (p. 177), along with neophobia (anything new), asymmetriphobia (asymmetrical things), bibliophobia (books), chorophobia (dancing), anglophobia (Englishness), alliumphobia (butter), arachibutyrophobia (peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth), technophobia (technology), musophobia (mice), and hellenophobia (pseudoscientific terms). But, although this source suggests that pedophobia is a non-notable specific phobia, Wikipedia has articles for neophobia, technophobia, and musophobia. The Wikipedia article Bibliophobia is a stub about the social attitude, not the specific phobia. Like this article, Technophobia seems to be primarily about the social attitude, with a few sentences suggesting that the word also refers to a specific phobia, but the distinction there is as unclear as in this article. Neophobia and Musophobia (actually a redirect to Fear of mice) are both tagged with Template:Refimprove. Arachibutyrophobia is a redirect to List of phobias. Anglophobia and Hellenophobia are both about prejudices: anti-English and anti-Greek. We would need better sources about pedophobia as a specific phobia to establish notability (and existence of reliable medical/psychological sources) before splitting. Such sources could be added to this article or listed here on the talk page (with page numbers where relevant). Biogeographist (talk) 22:14, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, articles about the fear and/or dislike of something, which may have "phobia" as part of the title, not always being about phobias in the clinical sense is something I mentioned at Articles for deletion/Internet phobia. I gave homophobia as an example, just like I did above, and I pointed to what an IP stated at Talk:Technophobia. "Internet phobia" was redirected to the Technophobia article. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:25, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it makes sense to first organize the article better into two (or maybe more) clearly differentiated sections, and see how that works. I'll take a swing at it now, but I can't read a lot of the refs (they are offline), so not sure how much I can do. Herostratus (talk) 05:57, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I haven't read the refs yet, so I'm willing to be educated, but I have a hard time believing that there is much fear of children in the social/political sense (as opposed to the medical/psychological sense). I think there is plenty fear of youths (teenagers etc.) but that's an entirely different thing altogether. "Child" in idiomatic use means something along the line of "not a teenager yet" (its a human word, so there is not a precise age cutoff).

The article Child begins "Biologically, a child is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty. The legal definition of child generally refers to a minor..." and this is entirely correct. And we are not talking about technical legalities here; people who are fearful of, troubled by, or disdainful of youths are not concerned with the precise birthdays of people. Seven-year-olds and eight-year-olds are perceived in one way (for social/political fear purposes) than seventeen-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds, and the latter two are perceived similarly (for fear purposes) notwithstanding that one is a minor and one a major.

I mean, I am starting from that assumption (since it's true). If the refs say different, then that's different, but we're not compelled to use refs that are prima facie wrong.

So for instance the first ref is titled "Fear of teenagers is growing in Britain, study warns" and that either doesn't belong in this article or else the article needs a different name. I assume; we'll see.

There is an article Adultism already, so some stuff can maybe go there. Herostratus (talk) 05:57, 20 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I just looked at the 2007 deletion discussion, and I noticed that there was already discussion of the children vs. youth issue back then. The deletion discussion mentions the article on Ephebiphobia, which I hadn't looked at before. Ephebiphobia and Fear of children are both included in Template:Youth empowerment and Template:Discrimination. It would seem to be important to differentiate them if two articles are justified. Biogeographist (talk) 13:15, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * As the edit history of the Ephebiphobia article shows, I'm aware of that article. Given how poor the Fear of children article currently is, and that it's not that big (especially if the off-topic and/or synthesis material is removed), and that "children" fall under the youth category, merging this article with the Ephebiphobia article could be seen as an option. You know, if it was retitled "Fear of youth." As for child, although the term child also applies to teenagers, I see where Herostratus is coming from. A number of sources, when speaking of both young children and teenagers, will state "children and adolescents" or "children and teenagers," for example. If the Fear of children article is covering teenagers in addition to young children, as one source Herostratus pointed to above indicates, then the article is somewhat of a redundant fork to the Ephebiphobia article. And one could state that it's all the more reason for a merge. But then again, the Ephebiphobia article indicates that the term ephebiphobia is about adolescents/teenagers, although it's likely that, currently, not all of the sources in the article are limited to adolescents/teenagers. That article isn't titled "Fear of youth," which is broader in meaning than stating "ephebiphobia." So that's a reason for not merging. It seems that it's best to keep the Fear of children article about younger children, and the Ephebiphobia about adolescents/teenagers. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:30, 21 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Another note: In sources, youth does more often refer to adolescents/teenagers than to younger children. And "fear of youth" does currently redirect to the Ephebiphobia article. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:36, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

The split
Herostratus, I don't feel that it was a good idea to create a Pedophobia (phobia) article and a Pedophobia (social phenomena) article. For one, "pedophobia (phobia)" is redundant. And like I stated above, we don't split articles like this. We include the social aspect with the medical aspect. Phobias often are partly social anyway. I don't understand splitting the matter this way. It's unnecessary content forking. I will leave a note about it at the WP:Med, and they will hopefully weigh in. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)


 * The resulting "phobia" article cites four sources. One is a website that lists all the possible names of all the possible phobias.  The other three are disallowed under WP:MEDRS rules because they are 20 to 50(!) years old.  Basically, I think this would qualify for the general rule of redirecting most specific phobias to the big List of phobias; I do not find evidence for it being a discrete clinical entity, or for it being notable.
 * I'm also wondering whether anyone's actually checked the oldest of those sources. As far as I can tell from just a few, possibly unrepresentative sentences, it's about how anxiety causes infertility, so if you'll just relax, then you'll get pregnant.  That's not exactly a specific phobia about children.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:50, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
 * We should merge back together. Have the refs do not even mention "pedophobia"...
 * Both articles were also tiny, and do to the lack of sourcing should likely be made smaller yet. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 14:39, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
 * agree w/ Doc James--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:29, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Major rewrite
OK I rewrote the article. I removed the entire section about voluntary childlessness, because that has little to do with the subject -- at least as written, although its sensible that pedophobes would not want to have children... if someone wants to rebuilt the section on that basis from scratch, fine. The section was also tagged as original research.

Other than that I didn't make major removals. I did move stuff around, mostly to facilitate the separation of the psychiatric from the social. I also rewrote stuff. And I added a short paragraph.

It's unfortunate that the same word is used for two entirely different phenomena, and I think the social-phenomenon use is usually sloppy and polemical. It is true that "-phobia" is used for a lot of non-psychiatric phenomena (Anglophobia, etc.) but not when there's a psychiatric condition with the same name.

It'd be unfortunate if "fear of flying" was to describe both 1) personal fear of flying in an airplane, and 2) opposition to air travel in general, for some reason (it over-homogenizes the world or whatever) as a political belief. And I haven't seen this, except for this word "pedophobia". Which is unfortunate. It's doubly unfortunate because a lot of times it's referring to people who are like 16, when "child" most commonly refers to pre-pubescent kids. But, it is what it is.

Altho, a lot of the social phenomenon stuff is a pile of pig lips, to some degree. Some of the refs are pretty fringe, and most of the others are academic papers written by people with a political ax to grind. Whatever. But I mean we have this article, we have the article Adultism, we have the article Adultcentrism, and we have the article Ephebiphobia and so on. A fair amount of this stuff is from people who are kind of polemicists, but oh well... that doesn't make it automatically unacceptable. But we could possible merge these four articles in some useful way. Because they more or less say the same thing in four different places, and probably in four different ways, and it'd be better to have it all together.

The words "fear of children" and "pedophobia" should possibly be made into disamg pages, and this article split. That's be fine is someone wants to do it. But I'd rather see a larger effort to merge stuff and see where that goes.

BTW I haven't been able to find evidence that pedophobia is in the DSM, but I probably don't really know where to look. Herostratus (talk) 05:24, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

OK, article has been split
into two articles, this one (Pedophobia (phobia) and a new one (Pedophobia (social phenomena). Pedophobia alone is now a disambig page pointing to these two articles, and Fear of children is a redirect to that disambig page.

My work here is done I guess. Any changes that people want to make in the article names or contents is OK with me. Herostratus (talk) 19:55, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Commented in the section above. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:27, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Have remerged. This source is user generated content.[massivephobia.com] Putting any word together with phobia should not equal a Wikipedia article. Gah. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 14:50, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Right, I was going to do that, based on Flyer's objection, And yeah, that's a poor ref, sorry.


 * At any rate, the lede as it now stands is... not acceptable... I mean
 * Is kind of indicating that there's a medical condition that makes people vote against fixing the high school gym, and we want to be real careful about doing that.
 * Is kind of indicating that there's a medical condition that makes people vote against fixing the high school gym, and we want to be real careful about doing that.


 * Anyway, after considering what we have as refs, I don't think there's enough here of sufficient detail to say anything useful about "pedophobia" as a medical condition (three of the refs are no good, the fourth is possibly not too good (I can't access it), and the one good one is apparently about an individual case.) There may not be such sources anywhere for this vanishingly rare medical condition. So I think we need to just remove it. Herostratus (talk) 03:03, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Fear of witch hunts
Have any reliable sources drawn a connection between fear of children and fear of overreach by parents, mandated reporters, and activists misinterpreting a situation? Damian Yerrick (talk) 17:27, 16 April 2023 (UTC)