Critics have tended to dismiss Wharton’s depictions of children as victims of their parents’ misbehavior (Paul Marvell of The Custom of the Country) to optimistic symbols of the future (Nettie Struther’s baby in The House of Mirth), failing to take into account the complexity of children as characters. In fact, Wharton’s novels are populated with children – typically girls – marked by suggestions of gender queerness; transgression, seduction, and aggression; age-impropriety; and ethnic ambiguity. From “The Valley of Childish Things” (1896) to “A Little Girl’s New York” (1938), Wharton emphasizes the absence of childhood innocence and the resistance of children to linear development. Wharton’s children are rarely innocent, frequently knowing, and resistant to narratives of linear development. Concentrating on the novels The Reef (1912) and The Children (1928), and touching on other works by Wharton, I demonstrate how this theme flows throughout the author’s corpus.