Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion that has been tabled by Senator van Turnhout and other Senators. The Government and I are happy to support it. I have been struck by the points that have been made. Like Senator van Turnhout said about what happened when the matter was debated last year, I also got a very big reaction from people. Many people were horrified that child beauty pageants could happen in Ireland.

I welcome this complex motion as it offers an opportunity to examine an unexamined assumption in our lives - an assumption about childhood. First, we assume that childhood is a place or state that has always existed, more or less, in the way that it exists today. Second, we assume that childhood is a venerated and protected state across the world but neither is the case.

Without question, childhood is a reasonably recent artefact. Of course children were always children but a separate state - a discrete area constituting childhood - has existed for little more than 200 years in a severely limited geographical area. In most countries, for most periods, children were born and if they survived their first year - which was not probable - they speedily often became assistants to their working parents. The concept of childhood per se did not exist. Mothers took their babies into the fields with them. Paintings of royal families, down through the ages show the offspring of a King and Queen alongside their.parents but never as children. They were dressed, posed and painted as miniature adults and we have seen that portrayal very frequently. That portrayal was emblematic of how they were viewed, not just in those families but in many families. They were viewed as assets and heirs to be married off long before either of the two children involved was capable of a meaningful marriage. Those are some examples but there are many more.