Whether the child is innocent or not name-calling or using derogatory terms against the child is a highly unsucessful activity.
Notice I said "against the child". When the term is used against the child. The term can also be used FOR the child. And that pro-child usage of the term "bastard" needs be used more in our society, where we to be wise.
Words have their proper place and are a tool for understanding and remembrance, and a aid to motivation and planning in order to get things done. Abseent a simple clear term upom which to associate acquired knowledge and understanding the handicap on, a young child is left to confusion and uncertainity as to what that handicap is, and then unable to focus and concentrate to deal with that handicap and ameliorate it.
It is the manner used that the term becomes hurtful. And that is so of any term!
I tried to make that case to you with the word "gay", a truly joyful word, stolen by a vile group and now almost solely associated with that group's very own mal-behaviour.
Let's review a few points. One -- it is not the word or term that is derogatory and hurtful, it is the manner in which the word is used.
Two -- Any novel word or euphemism employed to mask a bad or perverted behaviour will in time become so associated with that vileness that the word itself will be considered to be as rude as the old term which it once replaced. That is the usual case. The case of "gay".
Three -- Sometimes for a while, years, but not forever, the pretty euphemism will obscure the badness or harmfulness or of the behaviour, or the curse of the handicap. This obscurity causes a harmful social amnesia, for the society forgets for a while the real long-term harms that accrue from the behaviour, or the particular special needs of those so cursed as an outcome of that behaviour.
In a simple and more short-term example it is like missing that the stovetop may be hot to the touch the new ceramic stovetops do not get red, or have flames. Until one relearns how to identify a hot stove, fingers get burnt.
That social amnesia was brought on by use of an obscuring euphemism. One glaring case of it is that dicessed here. Of bastards and bastardy.
Four -- It is of great importance to individual health and well-being, in addition to that of society, to have simple clear terms to describe these conditions.
Especially for the ones most harmed -- the bastards. They have to know their situation in order for them to deal with it, and to counter its curse.
Give them a fighting chance, damn it!