by Caroline Bird
Politically they’re puritans.
They gasp at nudity like it’s 1912.
They’re shocked by minor offences
such as chip stealing. 98% possess zero faith
in the concept of rehabilitation for adults.
As far as little children are concerned
forgivable mistakes occur before sixteen,
after that you’re on your own. Their stance
against marital infidelity is Victorian and their
position on divorce aligns with the Vatican City.
Nuance is irrelevant to the infant moralist.
They sit in plastic umpire chairs at the dinner table
shouting out unintelligible scores. They’re violent.
They’ll head-bang a breast or stuff a sticky hand
up a skirt then just amble away
like raging misogynists. They won’t even allow
their mothers to bring home a sexy stranger
on a Friday night. They disapprove of drugs
like Tory neighbours. Their standpoint on drunkenness
is predictably brutal, especially for women.
It’s like the sixties never happened. They believe
every adult should be locked into a sexless yet eternal
marriage, never slip up or forget
even a lunchbox, and be completely transparent
and open to feedback 24/7. They’re hypocrites.
They spy on you in the toilet. Parents aren’t permitted
even the smallest private perversion yet a child
can secretly urinate in a drawer for three weeks
until the smell warrants investigation.
Their relentless indignation! Their fascist vision
of the perfect family! Little children are like
the tsarist autocracy of pre-revolution Russia.
Their soft hands have never known work.
Their reign is unearned.
On behalf of my younger self I apologise
to my parents for the simplistic, ill-informed
and ignorant questions I hurled concerning
their romantic and sexual life choices.
How could you do that to dad?
How could you do that to mum?
I was operating under a false consciousness,
responding to an imagined society governed
by laws I’d gleaned from picture books
about tigers coming to tea. I had no right.
No credibility. Imagine bellowing criticism
from the stalls after seeing two minutes of a play!
Imagine expecting universal loyalty whilst flinging
spaghetti hoops at the wall! Imagine having such
confidence in your innate philosophy of love!
We kneel to tie the laces of their unfeasibly tiny shoes.
- Share this Poem:
Last updated August 24, 2025
About this Poem
Caroline Bird’s ‘Little Children’ – with its hyperbolic insight into the rages of adored and disapproving dictators – is as much a poem about adulthood than childhood. It is an adult voice speaking about the experience of being under the gaze of a politically attuned child. For the most part, in the brilliant opening stanza, it is the moral lives of parents that are being scrutinised: their naked bodies, their ‘private perversion[s]’, sex lives, marriages and divorces; the adult desire for autonomy; their recreational use of drugs or alcohol; their leadership in the family unit; their capacity or incapacity for change.Children inhabit an adult world before they’re grown, and are often accomplished observers of the adult condition. If the child is well cared for and happy, they are all the more likely to voice their conclusions with a confidence that is as accurate as it is inexperienced; all the while demanding affection, nurture and attention. The bodies – no, the lives – of their adults belong to them: ‘they’ll head-bang a breast or stuff a sticky hand / up a skirt then just amble away / like raging misogynists.’ Time and perspective are portrayed with elastic precision throughout both stanzas of ‘Little Children’, published in The Air Year, a collection released after Bird became a parent herself. A turn arrives with ‘On behalf of my younger self’, and we come to suspect that the child depicted was the poet herself, judging the judgmentalism of her own childhood self whose legal opinions were formed from picture books: ‘I had no right. / No credibility.’ The idea that a child’s ideas need to be credible before being articulated is so ridiculous it’s comedic. ‘Imagine bellowing criticism / from the stalls after seeing two minutes of a play!’
Alongside amusing apology is an understanding that a child – if they are happy – should feel free to be a mini-dictator. When a child is lucky enough to have an ‘innate philosophy of love’ what else should they do but develop their confidence by hurling forth opinions as they decorate the wall with the food prepared for them by their long-suffering – if hypocritical – parents.