Think of the children
[7][8] Community, Space and Online Censorship (2009) argued that classifying children in an infantile manner, as innocents in need of protection, is a form of obsession over the concept of purity.
[9] It was an exhortation in the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins, when the character of Mrs. Banks pleaded with her departing nanny not to quit and to "think of the children!
"[10] The phrase was popularized as a satiric reference on the animated television program The Simpsons in 1996,[11][12] when character Helen Lovejoy pleaded variations of "Will someone please think of the children?
[21][22] In 2018, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, coined the term 'pedophrasty' for an argument "involving children to prop up a rationalization ... Often done with the aid of pictures".
[4] U.S. President Bill Clinton used the phrase in a 1999 speech to the International Labour Organization,[24] asking his audience to imagine a significant reduction in child labor: "Think of the children ... freed of the crushing burden of dangerous and demeaning work, given back those irreplaceable hours of childhood for learning and playing and living.
[26] Benjamin Powell used the phrase differently in his book, Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy, writing that in the absence of child labor some youth faced starvation.
[9] In a 2011 article for the journal Post Script, Andrew Scahill wrote about the power of children in rhetoric to create an untenable stance for an opposing viewpoint.
[31] Wilkinson cited research by No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk-Averse Society author Tim Gill that hypersensitivity in defending children from potential harm has the adverse effect of contributing to the inability of youth to own their choices and react to dangerous situations.
was used by irrational individuals to support arguments about the dangers to youth of the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse": "pirates", terrorists, organized crime, and child pornographers.
[34] In his 2013 book, Fervid Filmmaking, Mike Watt discussed the history of censorship relative to the United Kingdom's Obscene Publications Act 1959 and noted that films banned during that period became known as "video nasties".
[35] Brian M. Reed wrote in his book, Nobody's Business (also published that year), that the phrase was devoid of substance and could be replaced for comic effect with "How many kittens must die?
[10] Before the phrase's exposure in The Simpsons, most Americans first became accustomed to it during the 1980s in a charity commercial with Sally Struthers for Christian Children's Fund.
[42] The Simpsons writer Bill Oakley said in the 2005 DVD commentary on the episode that the motivation for the phrase on the show was to emphasize how "think of the children" was used in debate; irrelevant, it sidetracked discussion from the original issues.
[15] After the popularization of the phrase on The Simpsons, its use in society was often ridiculed, and came to be referred to as "Lovejoy's Law" in internet culture as early as 2006, probably independently coined several times.
[8] In the Toronto Star, journalist Edward Keenan defined "Lovejoy's Law" as a warning that the phrase is a probable diversion from a weak logical stance, writing that true empathy toward children involved rational argument rather than manipulation.
[13] According to The Canberra Times, the phrase's 2009 use to support Internet censorship by the Department of Communications of the government of Australia was evocative of Helen Lovejoy.
[43] In his book, The Myth of Evil, Phillip A. Cole wrote that Helen Lovejoy's plea assumed that children were pure, unadulterated potential casualties who required constant defense from danger.
[44] Cole contrasted this notion with character Bart Simpson, who prefers creating disorder to conformity and adherence to regulations.
[44] According to Cole, this exemplifies the dual perception of children by society: guileless potential prey and malevolent entities to be distrusted.
