The New Age movement is a religious phenomenon that peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, a diverse conglomeration of disparate practices that are loosely bound by the concept of an imminent or present “new age” and by a critical reaction against rational materialistic explanations of the universe. Wouter Hanegraaff has painstakingly catalogued many of the practices and beliefs associated with this designation and many of the major New Age authors in New Age Religion and Western Culture. While much ink has now been spent on describing this expansive phenomenon and its multiple manifestations, one area that remains largely untouched is the special role of children within New Age culture.

In particular, I refer to the growth at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first of the discourse of the “Indigo Child”, a gifted child who is the harbinger of the coming new age and possessor of special gifts. In a recent essay, Sarah Whedon submitted the first academic analysis of the Indigo Child discourse; the present work will serve to complement and expand upon Whedon's analysis. Additionally, this chapter will address recent works on Indigo Children, including film and online media, and seek to contextualize both New Age authors and their sceptical opponents within this twentieth- and twenty-first-century discourse on childhood.