Childhood innocence is often equated with a state of unworldly naivety considered both precarious and enviable. Western culture values this blissful ignorance in our children so much that enormous economic, emotional and rhetorical resources are invested in maintaining it, in protecting children, that is, from the kinds of knowledge and experience that make the rest of us feel world weary. Through the carefully crafted ignorance fostered in children, an enchanted world is maintained that we can occasionally glimpse through their eyes. We manipulate their environment to produce belief in paranormal creatures (hiding chocolate eggs at Easter, sprinkling fairy dust at bedtime, leaving biscuit crumbs on Christmas morning and perhaps riskiest of all, exchanging lost teeth for hard cash under their sleeping heads). But we do so innocently and for their own good. After all, children have the rest of their lives to grow sour. What harm could a belief in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny do? Why disturb their paradise?

One reason for caution about the creation of such an enchanted realm is that after paradise comes a fall. When children are polluted by what is regarded as the adult world, adults are quickly disenchanted with them. The fantasy world we build for children is in fact our paradise, not theirs. Once children are exposed to that forbidden fruit, worldly experience, they no longer function as the window onto innocence and simplicity we desire them to be. The paradise they reconstruct for us is bought with deception.