The author attributes his life-long commitment to healing, particularly of children, to the unconscious inheritance of his grandmother’s trauma, which silenced her. Unbeknownst to him, she had lost everyone in her family and village in a pogrom and lost two sons to illness, long before his birth. The author’s forensic work caused him pain over the abuse, neglect, and even murder of young children for whom he has done psychological autopsies, including three children whose deaths are discussed in this paper. He argues that such tragedies reflect a global phenomenon of “childism” – hatred of children. Childism is not only an individual problem, but a societal and even a deeply biological one. Humans today may not differ greatly from lower animals that not only kill their competitors, but eat their own young in the face of environmental impoverishment, or from earlier humans who ritually sacrificed their young. The author argues that societal childism can be at least partially countered societally by psychoanalytically-informed work protecting children in therapy offices, courtrooms, and in public health and social policies prioritizing child welfare over war and profit. Such work must be preventive, not just interventive. Several examples, including at Harlem Family Services, are provided.
Kliman et al. (2026) studied this question.