Abstract
This chapter engages with the question of how knowledge figures in intergenerational relationships and the significance of this? In general, and ideologically, it is presumed that adults are knowledgeable and children are not, and that this is one element that is constitutive of generational orderings. Childhood is, de facto, defined as a time of innocence through ignorance, and this is particularly the case in respect of certain kinds of knowledge that are to do with aspects of everyday life and the social worlds of adults such as sexuality, violence, crime, hedonism, economics, wars, politics and so on. This definition of childhood as a time of innocence and lack of knowledge comes from an ideological base rather than empirical realities. I argue for empirical consideration of how knowledge is mobilised or withheld within intergenerational encounters and the effects of that for both parties, with particular reference to questions of children’s participation.