Cartoon characters,equality nurseries and children’s ‘best interests’: On childhood and sexuality in Poland

Childhood innocence and children’s ‘best interests’

The concept of childhood innocence has a long tradition in both philosophy and developmental psychology, with Rousseau and Piaget being the chief proponents of the idea (Piaget, 1929 [1973]; Rousseau, 1992 [1762]). Projecting a universalized view of the child as one in need of protection from sexuality, over the years the notion of innocence as intrinsic to the child’s nature has come to be widely criticized. Nowadays scholars commonly agree that the concept of childhood innocence is a social construct that is meant to uphold and strengthen the hegemonic position of the adult and, in effect, maintain the existing power relations (Robinson, 2005).

This subjugation to a rule of adults often means that the voices of children are overlooked or marginalized in the public sphere, despite an increasing trend to incorporate young people into formal political decision-making, for example through national children’s parliaments. Needless to say, the control and discipline extended over children is sanctioned by the discourse of caregiving and protection, and governed by the conventional wisdom that, unlike childhood, adulthood equates with knowledge, experience and a deeper awareness of what young people want and what the perils awaiting them are (Robinson and Davies, 2008a). This enforced compliance with adult rule also means that a highly constrained diet of ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’ is imposed on minors, their reactions, responses and behaviours. And even though the idea that children are social actors in their own right is now commonplace, there persists a fierce animus against the very likelihood that the simplistic binaries of childhood and adulthood might need to be reconsidered and redefined. According to Kerry Robinson this supposed protection ‘is a powerful means of individual and social control’ (2012: 260).

The idea that children need to be safeguarded from influences that might corrupt them is intrinsic to most cultures and centres predominantly on issues of sexuality, body and gender. This means that the lives of children are often heavily regimented and constrained by a set of boundaries, including physical, conceptual and moral ones. Frequently, such restrictions are framed as something that is done ‘in the best interests of the child’ (Robinson, 2012: 260). Nonetheless, these limitations, inevitably, ‘forestall and contain the child’s movement’ (James et al., 1998: 38). Scholars argue that the sustained policing in matters of sexuality equates with the refusal of personhood at private level and citizenship at the level of society. In other words, ‘the denial of childhood sexuality is an essential component of the broader negation of children and young people as active citizens’ (Corteen and Scraton, 1997: 98).

On one hand, this translates into prohibited or limited access to knowledge whereby children are refused the right to learn about their bodies and their needs, and discouraged from exploring non-traditional family models or non-stereotypical gender roles. On the other hand, this is visible in the recurring social constructions of young people as lacking capacity, agency, and, by the same token, sexual desire (Robinson and Davies, 2008a). And yet, scholarship on the subject forcefully demonstrates that desire is not an adult-only affair. In fact, adolescents admit having sexual fantasies, experiencing arousal, masturbating and willingly engaging in sexual activity, even if they are reluctant to report that (Halpern et al., 2000; Shashikumar et al., 2012). This shows that social expectations and legally enforced restrictions, such as the age of consent, do not always intersect with the actual needs and practices in place.

But the idea of sheltering the purity of childhood becomes even more pronounced around the issues of gender and homosexuality. Children tend to be seen as carriers of heteronormative family values and warrantors that the nuclear family ‘ideal’ is upheld and sustained (Halberstam, 2005; Jackson, 2006; Warner, 1999). As such, children are often associated with other categories that govern such a family model, including coupledom, procreation and heterosexuality, and paired with conceptions about ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ ways of organizing social relationships (Warner, 1993).

At the same time, children undergo a constant process of heterosexualization despite being considered, in essence, asexual. This takes place in a variety of settings, from institutional to private ones. As Kerry Robinson rightly points out, ‘the construction of heterosexual identities and desire in early childhood is a socially sanctioned integral part of children’s everyday educational experiences – for example, mock weddings, kiss and chase, mummies and daddies’ (2012: 268). Once the heteronormative model becomes transgressed, be it in play, the media or other contexts, moral panic ensues. Triggered by alarming news stories over issues that are seen as a threat to the existing social order, moral panic results in an ‘exaggerated or misdirected public concern, anxiety, fear, or anger’ (Krinsky, 2013: 1). Steven Bruhm and Natasha Hurley observe that ‘nowhere is this panic more explosive than in the field of the queer child, the child whose play confirms neither the comfortable stories of child (a)sexuality nor the supposedly blissful promises of adult heteronormativity’ (2004: ix).

These preconceptions also have an immense impact on scholarly research. There is a general consensus in the field that the implied vulnerability of the child results in access issues whereby ‘gatekeepers’ such as schools or parents ‘protect’ their charges from participating in research on sexuality, be it on ethical or moral grounds (Flanagan, 2012; Sparrman, 2014). At the same time, an ever-increasing number of studies that look at negative aspects of sexuality, such as sexual abuse and exploitation, reinforces the discourse of defencelessness and protection, and hampers new approaches to the topic (Egan and Hawkes, 2008). In particular, scholars stress that the narrative of ‘purity under threat’ impedes research on ‘everyday’ common understanding of sexuality by children and reinforces the idea of childhood sexuality as a source of possible harm (Buckingham and Bragg, 2004; Egan and Hawkes, 2008).

In recent years we have seen a number of stories that have challenged the traditional notion of childhood as a period marked by asexuality and bodily neutrality. Common interpretations of these stories have tended to express the social longing for the imaginary model child who is a submissive and voiceless object of adult agency. For example, the use of the 10-year-old model, Thylane Blondeau, for a provocative French Vogue spread in 2010 implicitly questioned the supposed childhood passivity and the lack of agency which are often attributed to children. At the same time, the ensuing debate replicated the powerful stereotype of children as the victims of widespread sexualization and exploitation of children by the media. Although Blondeau’s participation in the shoot could be read as an expression of her professional maturity and financial resourcefulness that contravened her actual age, the debate that followed reiterated the notion of the girl as an unwitting object of a sustained mistreatment of minors by the sex-infused media (see Mallick, 2011; Quirke, 2011; Rose, 2011; Zuckerman et al., 2011).

Reducing young people to the role of mute marionettes is also visible in the humanitarian debates concerning minors affected by war-related sexual violence. For instance, the ever-growing narratives surrounding former girl soldiers construct them as one-dimensional, and passive, victims of armed conflict. However, their personal accounts challenge such an image and attest to their mental strength and an extraordinary ability to live with, and eventually overcome, the trauma of sexual abuse (Schultheis, 2008).

As noted earlier, children are also often used to endorse the hegemonic heternormative family model. For instance, in the period leading up to the Irish referendum on gay marriage in 2015, the opponents of the idea brought up the issue of surrogacy, arguing that children need to be provided with both male and female role models, and thus should grow up in households where a mother and a father were present. Appearing on publicly displayed posters, children’s ‘best interests’ came to be exploited by the homophobic discourse of the ‘No’ campaigners, whist remaining neatly disguised under the narrative of ‘fighting for the young’ (Coulter, 2015).

Each and every one of those stories demonstrates the cultural silences and the occasional social anxiety surrounding the myriad ways in which childhood and sexuality intersect. The aforementioned debates also point to the perceived role of children as the gatekeepers of heteronormative societal structures, whereby their presence allows for the ‘natural’ and ‘ideal’ ways of organizing human relationships to be maintained. Underpinning this approach is a strong conviction that the young should be protected from premature access to sexual knowledge, whether it is through preventing them from engaging in ‘inappropriate’ behaviours or shielding them from ‘unsuitable’ media content or influences within the family.

This paradoxical combination of heterosexuality and asexuality of the child often constitutes an important frame for wider political debates, particularly on the eve of elections or during periods of heightened political power struggles (Robinson and Davies, 2008b). In Poland, as in many other countries, moral panic surrounding the intersections of gender, sexuality and childhood has frequently served as a fear mongering strategy and has often been used by conservative right-wing parties and the Church at times of political upheaval. But as I will suggest in this article, it is also the media on all sides of the political spectrum that have generated and sustained the moral panic. Thriving on and fuelling these contentious debates, the media have capitalized on such news stories and contributed to the idea of childhood sexuality as a controversial taboo topic and a battlefield for the future of the nation. The case study discussed in the next section is an apt illustration of this.

Tinky Winky as a dangerous homosexual

In 2007, Ewa Sowińska, the Ombudsman for Children appointed by Poland’s conservative government, set off a media storm after raising concerns about the popular television series Teletubbies.

I noticed that Tinky Winky has a ladies handbag but I didn’t realise he was a boy. At first I thought that the bag might be bothering the teletubby. After all, it is an unnecessary burden. Later I found out that this might have a homosexual undertone

Thus, the debate surrounding Tinky Winky turned out to be a reflection of a wider political culture in which homophobic comments became an acceptable element of public discourse. However, scholars often saw this incident as an expression of a moral panic that erupted in Poland in the advent of parliamentary elections. Kerry Robinson argued that:

The public panic around Tinky Winky in Poland is an example of the close surveillance of children’s early educational experiences and the use of moral panic to maintain the hegemony of heteronormative values that have become commonplace … The discourses associated with such public moral outcries are often those constituted by a small group of conservative individuals, who seize the moment, utilising particular media and political resources to gain public attention for an incident. These individuals largely exaggerate, sensationalise and distort the ‘facts’ about the issues at hand – all the main ingredients of a moral panic. (Robinson, 2008: 118)

As already noted, the public storm raging around the Teletubbies has often been read as an expression of moral panic manufactured by Poland’s conservative politicians. But immediately after the scandal broke out, Sowińska was called in by the then Marshal of the Sejm, Ludwik Dorn, a conservative himself, who warned her that her statements denigrated the importance of her position and had a negative impact on her overall image (PAP, 2008). Thus, the debate surrounding the cartoon character was considered too trivial by the members of the conservative government to dignify the attention from the Ombudsman. Soon enough, it became clear that Sowińska had fallen victim to provocation. The journalists who had initially interviewed her admitted this was their intention from the start and argued that this was the privilege of the democratic media (Pietniczka, 2007).

Whilst seemingly bearing all the characteristics of a moral panic brought about by the concerned Ombudsman who considered it her duty to fight for the purity of children, this was nothing more but a storm in a teacup. Cooked up by two journalists in search of a story that would sell more copies and attract wider readership, the controversy was in line with Wprost’s editorial policy at the time. After all, during that period the weekly was notorious for its provocative and attention-grabbing content and was one of the best-selling magazines in Poland. Nonetheless, as opposed to boosting Sowińska’s popularity figures amongst the conservative electorate and similarly oriented colleagues, the Teletubbies hullabaloo damaged her reputation and made her a laughing stock, both in her native Poland and abroad. Embarrassed by this unwanted attention, the Ombudsman repeatedly expressed regret over her political naivety. The sense of humiliation that came with her infamy was additionally deepened by the Bronze Medal in the ‘2007 Idiot of the Year Awards’, which is awarded annually by the Washington Post (Sroczyński, 2008).

It is fair to say that on this occasion the ‘moral panic’ was entirely constructed by the media and not, as it often happens, by conservative politicians who use their access to the media in order to garner publicity and support their case. In fact, what could be initially read as moral panic turned out to be a joke played on the unaware Ombudsman by the media. Even though this might have fed into conservative public attitudes towards LGBT people, reinforcing homophobic sentiments, ultimately the debate was devoid of the essential components of moral panic identified by Goode and Ben-Yehuda, namely concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility (1994). The incident itself proved to be a sign of the unpredictability of the media and an exercise in journalistic slyness.

Paradoxically, although in line with Sowińska’s political agenda on protecting the children from the perils of homosexuality, the Teletubbies debate became a subversive way of embracing queerness. Ridiculing homophobic discourse and those who spread it, in particular the nationalist-conservative League of the Polish Families of which both Sowińska and Giertych were members, the media refused to perpetuate the narrative of harmful influences that non-normative lifestyles had on the young. This led to an interesting reversal of roles whereby, for a short period of time, it was the homophobes, and not the gay people, who became the object of public ridicule. What is more, although intended as an innocent joke and not an organized political purge, the controversy was the nail in the coffin of Sowińska’s brief ministerial career.

As I will show in the next section, a more recent debate on another cartoon character, Winnie-the-Pooh, spoke to a much broader concern over the body as a potential carrier of ‘non-normative’ influences, whilst reflecting a wider social and political mood in Poland.

Winnie-the-Pooh as the threatening body

More than seven years after the debate surrounding the Teletubbies had erupted, a new public discussion about the sexuality of cartoon characters broke out in Poland. The debate originated in 2014, in the provincial municipality of Tuszyn, and began during a budget meeting at a local council when plans for opening a new playground were unveiled and the issue of naming emerged. One of the councillors suggested calling it after Winnie-the-Pooh but the proposal was quickly rejected as inappropriate. Subsequently, another attendee pointed out that a Polish character, called Miś Uszatek, would be a more fitting character. The local bear was deemed more suitable for the role since it was the protagonist of a widely known cartoon created in the nearby city of Łódź, renowned for its film industry, by the celebrated Se-ma-for Studios which specialized in animation.

However, this was not the only reason why the councillors decided to opt for that particular bear. In fact, it was primarily Pooh’s unsuitability for the role, in particular his ‘ambiguous body’, that was one of the deciding factors in opting for the Polish character. The English bear was described by the councillors as unsuitably clothed, and it was particularly his missing pants that raised concerns. Also his ‘dubious sexuality’, which quickly became branded as ‘hermaphroditism’, was brought up. As one of the attendees at the meeting said: ‘It is half naked which is wholly inappropriate for children. [Poland’s fictional bear] is dressed from head to toe, unlike Pooh who is only dressed from waist up’ ¹ (Denham, 2014).

The story quickly spilled out to the regional media, leading to an outburst of moral panic amongst the local citizens. This localized panic constructed the bear’s body as the threatening ‘Other’, whilst its ambiguity was seen as endangering the purity of children. A local resident was reported saying: ‘Winnie-the-Pooh is a bear with low intellect, and unfortunately, this is also evident in those who are concerned with this topic … Winnie-the-Pooh is an alcoholic and a liar. He walks with no underwear and has cut off his testicles’ (Richards, 2014). In a similar vein, one of the councillors was heard saying that the fact Winnie-the-Pooh was deprived of genitals had a lot to do with Milne’s own identity issues (Denham, 2014).

Here the ‘foreign’ bear became synonymous with moral decline, while his body came to signify a threat that might put at risk the innocence of local children. The additional associations with lying and alcoholism were meant to emphasize the overall unsuitability of Winnie-the-Pooh as the possible patron of the local playground and, by association, show he was an unlikely role model for the youngest inhabitants of Tuszyn. Implicitly, the whole debate demonstrated the salience of the ideas of ‘protection’ that children should be surrounded with. According to Corteen and Scraton, this involves:

Protection from strangers, protection from evil, protection from impure thoughts, protection from moral degeneration and, crucially, protection from their own bodies, the very potential of their personal physicality. What this equally obsessive moral crusade represents is a politics of denial. It ensures that children, systematically and institutionally, are denied access to information and knowledge concerning their physical and sexual development and its broader social and cultural context. (1997: 76–77)

Unsurprisingly, the controversy attracted worldwide attention and mobilized the international community, leading to concerted attempts at defending Winnie-the-Pooh. The mayor of Winnipeg in Canada was particularly vocal about the case. Winnipeg was indeed the city after which the female bear, Winnie, that inspired Milne, had been named. The city mayor, Brian Bowman, defended the fictional bear’s attire, whilst mentioning other cartoon characters whose garments were missing, including Donald Duck, Chip and Dale and Mickey Mouse, among others, and expressing hope that Milne’s protagonist would continue to teach children about kindness and friendship (Witkowska, 2014). The Polish press responded accordingly. One of the headlines captured the social mood surrounding the issue in an overtly ironic way: ‘Is Winnie-the-Pooh hermaphrodite? The whole world is laughing at Tuszyn’ (Witkowska, 2014). Nonetheless, as well as citing the denigrating comments that appeared in the western press, the article also reported the apologetic response of the mayor of Tuszyn, Witold Małecki:

It is very unfortunate that the conflict between councillors was publicized. It creates the impression that there the municipality has no more serious issues to deal with. There are so many playgrounds in Tuszyn that we could surely find space for both bears. I hope the next council meeting will resolve this problem. (Witkowska, 2014)

Equality nurseries as vehicles for ‘gender ideology’

In the autumn of 2013 the word ‘gender’ hit the headlines of all major Polish newspapers and TV stations, much to the befuddlement of people involved in gender studies. Heretofore an obscure foreign concept known only to specialists, gender was suddenly omnipresent in the tabloids, on Facebook and in the blogosphere. It was the focus of endless and heated debate for several months. Most importantly, it was also mentioned weekly in Poland’s Roman Catholic parishes – consistently demonized in sermons as a threat to the family. Gender is presented as the heart of the ‘Civilization of death’, and as a source of perversion and degradation. Parents were warned that their children were in danger. Polish culture, the faithful were informed, was under siege by aggressive ‘genderism’, a dire threat to our national tradition (Graff, 2014: 431).

This is how Agnieszka Graff described the eruption of panic, rage and anxiety, associated with the idea of ‘gender’, which swept across Poland nearly three years ago and which changed the way in which the concept came to be interpreted in the Polish public discourse.

The debate had serious repercussions on the way in which the sexual education of children came to be considered, particularly by conservative sections of society. Fairly quickly right-wing discourse became infused with messages about the ‘child in danger’. This was largely ironic since, with time, the discussion surrounding ideologia gender had come to be seen as a way of distracting attention from the sex abuse scandals that shook the Polish Catholic Church later that same autumn. Despite the questionable veracity of its main arguments, the debate also proved to have a detrimental effect on the pre-school education of children, and the idea of ‘equality nurseries’ became one of its victims.

The concept of ‘equality nurseries’ was first proposed in Poland in 2011 following an inflow of generous European funding. This was also when a set of guidelines addressed to schoolteachers was published. The 60-page brochure offered a discussion of the pitfalls of gender stereotyping and ways of avoiding it in nursery school education. It also deals with other issues that might be seen as taboo topics by nursery schoolteachers, including how to speak to children about sexuality, and how to teach them openness and respect where such matters are concerned. The brochure offers a set of lesson plans, which include educational activities, storytelling ideas and suggestions for arranging the play space. In particular, the authors propose a variety of games that encourage children to play with toys that are traditionally assigned to the other sex, stories that implicitly question stereotypical gender roles, both those in the public and the domestic sphere (for example, by encouraging children to think beyond the simple binary of ‘male’ and ‘female’ professions, and ‘male’ and ‘female’ household chores), activities that give the children the freedom to dress in a non-traditional manner and develop qualities that are often seen as typical for the other sex. Aside from these practical guidelines, the brochure emphasized the importance of creating an atmosphere that welcomes and encourages non-stereotypical gender behaviour through the use of respectful language and a rewards system that sees all children as equal, irrespective of the gender role models they choose to follow (Dzierzgowska, Piotrowska, and Rutkowska, 2011).

Following the escalation of debate on ideologia gender equality nurseries became targets of concerted attacks. Most notably, the Polish Academy of Science was asked to review the programme and its subsequent criticism of the project had catastrophic consequences. In particular, it led to an outpouring of voices from conservative members of society who felt that the basic rights of children were under threat. One opponent of the equality programme contended:

Every woman should have the right to be a woman, every man – a man. We should have the right to keep our own distinct qualities. We should have the right to bring up our children [in the traditional way] – girls as women and boys as men, with the aim of developing them into mature individuals. Every human being has the right to have a full awareness of who they are, what their sex is and what their distinct qualities are. There is actually a greater need for a programme that would encourage the feminine and masculine qualities, show their beauty and how they complement each other. This complementary nature of femininity and masculinity is something natural. We must not discriminate this beautiful relationship, we must show how valuable it is. (Kowalewska, 2013)

The debate surrounding equality nurseries speaks to what Agnieszka Graff termed as a ‘struggle over the shape of Poland’s democracy’ (2014: 434). In her discussion of the ‘anti-gender campaign’, she distinguished several factors that contributed to the status quo, including the weakness of civil society, the propensity to right-wing extremism, the prominence of the Catholic Church, the general dissatisfaction with the economic situation and the strength of nationalist movements. It is those conditions that, according to Graff, enabled the anti-gender campaign to fall on fertile ground and capture the attention of disenchanted members of society (2014: 434).

But the attack on equality nurseries can also be seen as an example of the wider political culture that emerged in the country post-1989. The early transition years legitimized the Church as the guardian of Polishness (understood broadly as a national, religious and moral category), which it had assumed under Communism. This was accompanied by a spread of traditional family values and the curtailment of women’s rights, as exemplified in the imposition of abortion law in 1993. Despite the short interlude of centre-left government by the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD) around the mid-1990s and again in the early 2000s, the liberal elites failed to establish themselves as an authoritative voice in Polish politics and provide an equilibrium to this ascendancy of conservatism. Later on, the liberal-conservative Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO), in power between 2007 and 2015, introduced a series of reforms which liberalized society and allowed greater freedom where issues of family, sexuality and gender were concerned. This included state funding for IVF, the introduction of the emergency contraception pill ellaOne, and a wider political debate on civil partnership and homophobia. Leading to resistance from the conservative Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), these changes were widely criticized as immoral and standing in sharp contrast to traditional family values. At the same time, with PO’s propensity to moderate conservatism where social issues are concerned and a general tendency to yield to external pressure, these attempts at reforming the society have been seen as largely superficial.

It remains to be seen what the future of equality nurseries will be. Whilst the conservative Law and Justice Party is gaining more strength following its ascendancy to power in November 2015, reversing decades of social, political and cultural changes that came with the fall of communism, and rapidly suppressing Poland’s budding democracy, it seems very unlikely that the programme has a bright future ahead. As I am writing this article, the country is witnessing a possibility of a total ban on abortion, an idea which is readily embraced by the Church and vehemently opposed by the liberal sections of society, most recently through the mass Black Monday strike in October 2016 which brought thousands of women to the streets in more than 60 Polish cities. In a divided political landscape like this, there is no doubt that the child will become ‘the perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics, the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political intervention’ (Edelman, 2004: 3). The future of children will increasingly become the battlefield of these conflicting ideas of gender, as society grapples with its burgeoning ethno-nationalism and the continuing blurring of boundaries between the Church and the state.

Conclusion

The tension between childhood and sexuality comes into light in a variety of public arenas. But nowhere is it so prominently featured and so acutely present as in political discourse and the media. The two feed off one another and often call into question the way we think about children, be it by the fetishization of childhood innocence or, on the contrary, by transgressing the ossified ideas of childhood purity. The three case studies discussed in this article show the breadth of public debates on the topic of childhood and sexuality, and point to a variety of contexts in which anxiety around these issues may arise. The stories concerning the two cartoon characters speak to the importance of the media in publicizing, ridiculing and, inevitably, blowing out of proportion the conservative ideas of what is in the best interest of children, and prompting, in a subversive and humorous manner, a discussion on the intersections of childhood, sexuality and gender. For example, the Teletubbies/Winnie-the-Pooh controversies demonstrated that even seemingly trivial disagreements over the ideas of play and leisure may lead to serious debates. Subsequently, play might often be presented as a sphere that needs to be ‘sanitized’ and ‘purified’ from any associations with the body. Ideally, this would be done by protecting children from influences that might encourage them to question the ‘model’ ideas of gender and sex, such as the purported instances of non-stereotypical dress code, as we have seen in the debate surrounding Tinky Winky, and the cases of undefined sexual identity, which the Tuszyn councillors saw in the Winnie-the-Pooh character. On the other hand, the case related to equality nurseries demonstrated how the diverging ideas on pre-school education might turn into a bone of contention between the conservative and liberal sections of society, and how other specifically local factors, such as the ‘anti-gender campaign’ instigated by Poland’s Roman Catholic Church, might additionally fuel and aggravate these social tensions and the associated emotions of panic, fear, rage and anxiety.

Indeed, in the case of Poland, the battle over childhood purity continues to be based on a complex interaction between several important actors: the conservative politicians, the media, the ‘concerned’ citizens on both sides of the political spectrum, and religious institutions such as the Church. Whilst the majority of these interventions use the catchphrase of the ‘child in danger’ to attract public attention, their motivations vary significantly. These include attempts at garnering political support, denigrating right-wing politicians or diverting discussion from other, more serious issues, such as the sex abuse scandal in the Church. Thus all of these debates are, to some extent, a smokescreen to hide or obscure much deeper social and political problems. In the process, children become instrumentalized and used as the fodder for both the conservative anti-gender rhetoric and the liberal discourse on the ‘future of children’. Inevitably, this turns them once more into passive objects of adult agency, the same agency that prides itself in prioritizing their best interests.