What does it mean to be a child? Out of Marah Gubar’s “Risky Business”, three models of childhood, and in effect three models for developing children’s literature theory, emerge.

Borrowing from ideas rooted in psychology, Gubar argues, “viewing children as deficient—as unable to grasp certain concepts or skills—can help produce the very incapacities we claim merely to describe” (451). Gubar refers to the deficit model and explains that this line of thinking breeds questions like, “why share poetry with children if they cannot be expected to comprehend it?” She then contends, “To treat young people in this condescending way is to adhere to a deficit model of childhood, whereby young people are viewed as lacking the abilities, skills, and powers that adults have” (451). This is has an inherent negativity and is understood to be an ineffective model for theorizing children’s literature. If the field of children’s literature employed this model, the work generated would be show overwhelming bias against it being a child.

The second, and equally problematic model introduced is the difference model. Gubar posits that the difference model of childhood “[stresses] the radical alterity or otherness of children, representing them as a separate species, categorically different from adults” (451). This postcolonial (see the use of self and other in Edward Said “Orientalism”) identification system creates an unfair dichotomy between the child and the adult. At this level of theoretical development, the adult will always be the self. The otherness of the child is a product of the model. Being a child is, here, defined as not being an adult. It is an oversimplification of the question and a model that disallows the child to be anything but a not-adult.

From here, Marah Gubar introduces a possible third model for children’s literature theory to aspire to. Gubar reasons for the kinship model in the following excerpt:

“It is my contention that these texts—which young people had a hand in creating—are worth studying not just because they are critically neglected (although they are), or because we need to make our conception of what children’s literature is more flexible and inclusive (although we do), but also because their content often helps us theorize in more nuanced ways about what it means to be a child, to have a voice, and to exercise agency. These texts are serving as an inspiration for me in developing what I call the kinship model of childhood. This model is premised on the idea that children and adults are akin to one another, which means they are neither exactly the same nor radically dissimilar. The concept of kinship indicates relatedness, connection, and similarity without implying homogeneity, uniformity, and equality” (453).

The kinship model is Gubar’s attempt to fray the otherwise finite boundaries between child and adult. The two distinctions overlap. They are in many ways malleable, conforming to a variety of nuanced identifiers. In many ways, it is easy to agree with Gubar’s development of such a model. The lines between child and adult are often constructs of a particular society or culture. To say that a child is a deficit of an adult, different than an adult, means that we must provide a clear definition of the line that exists between the two. This would be an everchanging boundary.

Gubar goes so far as to say, “It is dehumanizing and potentially disabling to say that a human being has no voice, or no agency” (453). While, these types of stances have an air of melodramaticism, there is something to be said of a model that forces superiority of one subgroup over another subgroup of human beings.

Protecting herself from those who understand the semantic necessity of using a word like child, Gubar orients herself with:

“The kinship model, by its very existence as a model of what it means to be a child, accepts the idea that the category “child” is necessary as a result of this original state of dependency. At the same time, however, it holds that children and adults are separated by differences of degree, not of kind, meaning that we should eschew difference-model discourse that depicts children as a separate species in favor of emphasizing that growth is a messy and unpredictable continuum. There is no one moment when we suddenly flip over from being a child to being an adult” (455).

Gubar outlines the distinction between the deficit and kinship models by arguing:

“Whereas the deficit model portrays children as universal novices who must overcome an across-the-board array of incapacities, the kinship model maintains that development is not always linear, meaning children sometimes have abilities that adults lack, such as a greater facility for learning new languages” (455).

We can not abandon the idea of the child. We should not avoid it in our exploration of children’s literature. Rather, we should be aware of the dangers of particular perspectives that we bring to our theories and methods of inquiry.

This approach is familiar for digital humanists. As we continue to define what it is to be a digital humanist, many see value or danger in using such words. The postcolonial self and other attitudes are active in many debates and the categorization/oversimplification of the other has a valuable parallel.