Adaptation studies has a kids problem.

This article examines the reluctance of adaptation studies to critically engage with childhood and children's media despite the field’s frequent use of children’s books as sites for theorizing adaptation. It argues that adaptation studies has been shaped by an "anxiety of infantilization," which aligns the child with notions of repetition, fidelity, and theoretical immaturity, often framing children through deficit and difference models that position them as lacking compared to adults. Through analyses of key scholars—Deborah Cartmell, Thomas Leitch, and Kyle Meikle—the article highlights how these binaries reinforce hierarchical oppositions within adaptation criticism and limit nuanced understanding of childhood’s role in adaptation. Drawing on Marah Gubar’s kinship model of childhood, which emphasizes relational similarity rather than radical difference between adults and children, the article advocates for a child-inclusive adaptation studies that recognizes children’s agency and the complex interrelations between childhood and media, thereby opening new interdisciplinary possibilities and challenging entrenched theoretical assumptions.