What did James Q. Wilson say?

That a critical mass of younger persons creates an explosive increase in the amount of crime. He was a professor at the School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, he said it in 1975, and one report credits that single remark with inaugurating the climate that has held since.

Which words are easily confused with it?

Pediophobia, which is fear of dolls, and podophobia, which is fear of feet. Ephebiphobia is related but puts its weight on adolescents and young adults, and paedophilia, despite the shared Greek stem, has nothing to do with any of them.

What did Pogrebin argue?

That America has an epidemic of it, noting that most people make an exception for their own offspring while feeling little warmth toward anyone else's.

Is there a clinical literature?

Some. It has been diagnosed and treated by psychiatrists and studied across forms of treatment, but most of what is written about it is sociological.

What is being done about it?

The response is political. Children's rights and youth participation movements address it, with Save the Children and the Children's Defense Fund among the organisations involved.

Fear of Children (Paedophobia): Meaning, Causes & Symptoms

Fear of Children

Paedophobia

One report puts the origin of the present climate with a professor of management. James Q. Wilson, then at UCLA, is credited with starting it off in 1975 with the observation that "a critical mass of younger persons... creates an explosive increase in the amount of crime". Fear of children, sometimes written paedophobia, is a fear set off by children, toddlers or infants being present or simply being thought about, and what it names spans a range: fear at one end, then disdain, then aversion, then plain prejudice. Psychiatrists have diagnosed and treated it, several treatment forms have been studied, and it has been named as one factor bearing on whether people conceive at all.

Which words paedophobia is confused with

The British spelling doubles the vowel, and pediaphobia is a third variant; all of them run the Greek paid-, meaning child, into phobos. Some writers treat it as interchangeable with ephebiphobia, whose weight falls on adolescents and young adults instead. Then there are the near-misses:

dolls are pediophobia
feet are podophobia
paedophilia, despite the shared stem, has nothing to do with any of it

Who says it is widespread

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the founding editors of Ms. magazine, called it an epidemic in America, and phrased the diagnosis so as to concede the loophole everybody uses:

Though most of us make exceptions for our own offspring, we do not seem particularly warm-hearted towards other people's children. Evolutionary psychology reaches the same conclusion by a shorter route, through the Cinderella effect, and explains it mostly by kin selection.

A version specific to universities has been proposed, running on a different mechanism. On that account the fear grows out of how sharply adults perceive what a child is capable of, and the author states the reason bluntly: "Children embarrass us because they point ever too cleverly and clearly to our denial of personal, material, and maternal history."

Sociologists treat the fear as something that builds rather than merely reflects. On their reading, what gets feared about children and childhood now is itself one of the materials from which childhood is continually constructed, working through relations of generational power that keep a child's life inside the boundary of adult watching, and those relations turn up across a great deal of society.

What is done about it

What is ranged against it is political rather than clinical. Several international social justice movements make it their business to work against neglect of what children need and against hostility to young people, children's rights and youth participation prominent among them, and the large organisations in that field, Save the Children and the Children's Defense Fund included, take on the discrimination whether it is declared openly or only implied.

Common questions

Questions about Paedophobia

What did James Q. Wilson say?: That a critical mass of younger persons creates an explosive increase in the amount of crime. He was a professor at the School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, he said it in 1975, and one report credits that single remark with inaugurating the climate that has held since.
Which words are easily confused with it?: Pediophobia, which is fear of dolls, and podophobia, which is fear of feet. Ephebiphobia is related but puts its weight on adolescents and young adults, and paedophilia, despite the shared Greek stem, has nothing to do with any of them.
What did Pogrebin argue?: That America has an epidemic of it, noting that most people make an exception for their own offspring while feeling little warmth toward anyone else's.
Is there a clinical literature?: Some. It has been diagnosed and treated by psychiatrists and studied across forms of treatment, but most of what is written about it is sociological.
What is being done about it?: The response is political. Children's rights and youth participation movements address it, with Save the Children and the Children's Defense Fund among the organisations involved.

Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26