In the preceding chapters we explored the relationship between notions of childhood innocence and the construction of adult identity and desire in the commercial and political spheres and in the realm of fantasy. This chapter considers the consequences of such idealisation borne by those who do not quite fit this ideal, such as teenagers, Indigenous children and refugee children. Their raw vulnerability threatens the sanctity of childhood, and in so doing, undermines the meaning of adulthood and community in Australia.

These groups fall foul of innocence for different reasons. Adolescence is a time of transition from childhood innocence to adult knowledge. Teenagers make us feel uneasy because they are exposed (and expose themselves) to risks they are still learning to negotiate. They disrupt the comfortable equilibrium associated with younger children. No longer fitting that identity, they test its boundaries and break away from parental authority. In the face of the challenges this independence incurs, teenagers render their parents helpless, and this sense of helplessness and instability feels like a kind of evil.

Indeed, the adolescent's progress is like the fall from paradise (occasioned by disobedience) from which evil is said to originate. Like God the creator, we birth, love and protect our children, and in so doing make them the lovable, compliant, innocent products of our creation fantasies. Once our protective edifices can no longer limit their curiosity, children become disobedient, disorderly, hormonal and a danger to themselves and the community.