neontocracy

plural neontocracies

1. anthropologyAny society in which young children are highly valued (despite their relatively low social utility in objective terms); the practice, prevalent in the West, of so valuing young children.

   And, incrementally, the gerontocracy becomes a neontocracy. But I would argue that the neontocracy has, lately, gotten out of control.

   2015, David F. Lancy, The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, page 71

   2 more examples

   But looking at the neontocracy from up, down, and sideways—that is, cross-culturally, historically, and holistically—leads quickly to the realization that in many cases, institutional attention to families benefits the institutions themselves more than it aids families.

   2014, Rachael Stryker, “Chapter 7: On Family: Adoptive Parenting Up, Down, and Sideways”, in Rachael Stryker, Roberto J. Gon, editors, Up, Down, and Sideways: Anthropologists Trace the Pathways of Power, Berghahn Books, page 151

   David F. Lancy (2015) argues in his book The Anthropology of Childhood that the ‘neontocracy’ of many modern Western societies is anomalous when compared with the majority of cultures across the world and across known human history.[…]There is less sense [in some gerontocratic contexts] than in neontocracies that children are to be protected, sheltered from work or considered non-economically productive.

   2017, Susannah Cornwall, Un/familiar Theology: Reconceiving Sex, Reproduction and Generativity, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 99