Think of the children
The 2002 book Art, Argument, and Advocacy (2002) said that using this phrase replaced emotion instead of reason in the middle of an argument with someone. Ethicist Jack Marshall wrote in 2005 that the phrase is so popular because it can stop people from behaving rationally especially when they are talking about morals.  "Think of the children" was used by censorship supporters to try to defend children from things they thought were dangerous to these young people. The book Community, Space and Online Censorship (2009) wrote that calling children just babies in need of protection was a form of focusing too much on the concept of purity. A 2011 article in the Journal for Cultural Research wrote that "Think of the children" was caused by people thinking too hard about telling everyone what to do and the difference between right-and-wrong.