What is child innocence?

Everyone can relate to the idea of child innocence, but what is it?

I suppose you could argue that it's a subjective term, as everyone experiences different childhoods and therefore their view of innocence during childhood may contrast to others.

 Personally, I think of child innocence as a form of purity. Young children obviously aren't "grown up" and are blissfully unaware of certain worries in life, such as money or death, therefore enabling them to live in the most care-free way possible. The purity I see within child innocence stems from the fact that young children simply aren't completely socialised. They have no concept of "doing this isn't socially acceptable", such as throwing tantrums in public (although this is obviously socially acceptable if a child does it, but not if an adult did), wearing nappies or stating the obvious which may cause controversy. For example, whilst in a supermarket with my 2 and a half year old nephew, a Muslim woman walked past wearing a full burqa, to which he pointed to the lady and asked me "what is that?". His innocence justifies his question and also justifies the blamelessness of his indadvertedly minorly racist question. This example also has to do with different cultures, but many children ask questions similar to this on a daily basis.

There is also the point that many things adults do, children can't/shouldn't. For example, it seems absurd to put make up on a young child, or dye their hair. There are some aspects of children's fashion that aim to make children look or feel older, such as the on-going discussions of the sexualisation of children through retailers selling bras and inappropriately designed underwear for young children and even toddlers. It is therefore ideologies of adults that help to identify the norms and values of what childhood 'should be'. 

Child innocence is something that you're unaware of when you're experiencing it. You can't identify with child innocence until you 'grow up' and can subsequently look back on your childhood. You could also argue that different age ranges experience different levels of innocence; from being a toddler, to a primary school 4/5 year old, even up to age 10/11. In a way, everyone is still innocent in some way as no one has knowledge about absolutely everything, which would suggest everyone has some form of innocence or naivety in them.