Parental Authority

[drain.you]

Chill, I'm not a teenager kicking off cause my parents are making me tidy my room :P
But I'm just wondering what people believe regarding parent's authority over their children, can it be justified?
Parents make their children do what they want from effective slave labour such as washing up, cleaning the car, mowing the lawn, etc.
They say children must be disciplined, must learn to work and must respect elders.
Where does this authority come from?
Should we blindly follow our 'creators' wishes?
Fair enough, parents should 'know best' due to their age-advantage (experiencing life for a lot longer than ourselves) and they kept us safe from a very young age and try their best to provide for us in most cases.
Most interested on an anarchist's perspective due to the fact, unless I'm mistaken, they wish to abolish authority.
Thanks for your replies in advance. I don't know what to think on the issue, thats why I'm presenting it to you so don't get all defensive and start a holy crusade of criticism on this post :P

[novemba]

hahaha, how old are you...13?

The authority that your parents have for you comes from unconditional love. When you turn 18 you can do whatever you want, just maintain a good relationship with your parents because if you don't i guarentee you'll regret it.

Unless of course theyre evil and they don't feed you and they beat you....in that case run away....but choirs are done for the well-being of the family...you're part of the family, so do your part

EDIT: I forgot to bring up the point that the best relationship with your parents is as equals, and most loving parents will except that...it might just take a lot to get it to that stage.

[drain.you]

lol. I'm 17, 18 in April. I wasn't bringing this issue up in relation to my personal son-parent relationship btw.

Why should we give them unconditional love?

[arielle]

The majority of parents do not see their children as equals, they see them as what they are, children. I myself am an anarchist and I disagree with half of the way that the parents bring up their kids. Mostly because of the way that I was(am) brought up. I love my parents but it's because of that uncondentional love that makes me want to rebel away from them.

To a select few that I know their parents are no better than Nazi's. Thus the saying "JESUS CHRIST YOU MOM IS A NAZI" that is so common in my area of South Jersey. A majority of parents total want total control over their children; school work, a job, life, pretty much everything. And also some parents want to live through their kids. "YOU HAVE TO GET ON CHEERLEADING, I WAS A CHEERLEADER AND IF YOU WEREN'T THEN YOU'RE A FAILURE AT LIFE." Okay, maybe it's a little exaggerated but I was told by my parents that if I didn't get straight A's in school, and follow the family business (executive consultant agency) then I would become a failure at life.

You also have the parents that push religion and political party onto their kids. Christian Republican parents force out Christian Republican kids. That problem is they don't let their children have a choice now-a-days. I know this one kid who wanted to start studying the occult, his mom called him a devil worshipper and now forces him to go to church every sunday or she takes away all of his "devil worshipping" friends and social life.

But the problem with America is that you can't tell parents how to raise their kids. I think some parents just need to open their minds, and possibly listen to their kids instead of telling them to sit down, shut up, speak when spoken too, and do what I say not what I do.

But... this is just what I think.

[novemba]

You shouldn't out of the blue. If you love them, then so be it.

I love my parents, so that's just how it is. I'm sure there are kids who don't love their parents, and I'm sure there are parents who don't love their kids. If you're in those situations you have to acknowledge that.

[TC]

Where does this authority come from?


Same place all authority comes from. Capital and threat of violence.


They created a situation where they control the financial means by which you need to live, and if thats not enough, they can either physically intimidate you, beat you (even if its illigal in your area which it often isn't, wtf are you going to do, call child services and take the largest financial hit of your young life essentially limiting your future oprotunities in a scenario which is likely to be as bad or worse?) or back up their threats with cops who inevitably support parent against their minor children. They could send you to a mental institution if they wanted to in many jouristictions (ironically termed 'voluntary commitment,' cause you can't "consent" to anything legally, your "guardians" volunteer you) or kick you out on the streets.

And the state (in America and most capitalist states anyways) enforces this superiority as it uses the family as the basic institution of social oppression. Conservatives love this, they call it "family values." No matter how much your parents or slave masters or pimps or employeers or prison wardens or mob debt collectors, happen to love you, or say they love you, the relationship dynamics will always be exploitive between grossly unequal partners.



The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation...

...

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not intended the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

[redstar2000]

Children's Liberation & Communist Society (http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1082768760&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[drain.you]

An interesting read comrade redstar2000, hadn't came across that page before.

I think in a communist society it may be required to take as much parental authority away as possible.

We will need to keep our children safe but our approach shouldn't be dragging children away from roads so they don't get ran down by cars it should be teaching them why it is dangerous.
Working Class parents are proven to not explain their actions to their children, whereas Middle Class tend to give reasons.

Communes for raising children, sounds like a good idea, in theory. But I hope that one day I will have children and I would want to care for my child myself, see him/her grow,etc. And I wouldn't like to hand that 'responsibility' over to someone else.

Should we teach our children the ways of communism? I mean, how can we tell our children that communism is right and something else isn't. It shouldn't be done like this, especially not from an early age. I think children are too vunerable to political theory, religious beliefs, etc and we should keep these as far away from them as possible until they are old enough to make decisions by looking at both sides of the arguements.

What authority should be given to children? In my beliefs, no-one should have authority over another. Okay then, how should parent's guide children? I suppose we need to prepare them for the outside world, teach them how to fend for themselves and teach them what can damage them.
Should we have a say over what time a child goes to sleep? No, but we should advise. Like comrade RedStar2000 wrote;

as far as I know, no child in history has refused to go to bed at a certain time only to remain awake forever.
Should we have a say over who a child dates/courts/has a relationship? No, but we can give them our advice when asked for it.
Should we have a say over a child's religion/political views/etc? No, it is their decision. My parents never enforced Christianity on me, though both being from that faith. But we can voice our opinions on religion and politics but WE MUST NOT PUNISH THEM FOR NOT BEING COPIES OF US. They are seperate people, they are not us, they are themselves and we must allow them to create this identity themselves.

Another thing comrade RedStar200 wrote:

The main thing that traditional families seem to be really good at is creating social conformity among the young
I agree. It is the primary institution of socialisation. People socialise their children into the core values of society, in capitalist society usually including views of 'do not kill', 'respect elders', 'communism=evil', 'nazis=evil', 'meritocracy works', etc.
When communism takes control of society, it will create values that support itself. The family is a core unit of society and it controls how society will be. The way we socialise our children will effect the shape of society in the future however the majority of people will just duplicate the values passed to them via capitalist society.

[TC]

Really, in a socialist society, the state should provide for children's financial, personal and educational needs including cost of housing, food, clothing, ect, and do so indepedently of their parents rather then through their parents. That would give them financial autonomy and therefore allow the possibility of a non-exploitive relationship with their parents. The capitalist system of "guardianship" is in a lot of ways a modern form of slavery, at least in so far as it amounts to legal possession of another human being and great perogatives over that human being (of course it doesn't mean unlimited perogatives)...Even the kindest parents are extraordinarily possessive over their children (how many times have you heard someone justify an action with a phrase like "she's my child" like it provides them somekindof entitlement).

Any necessary responsibilities for very young children should be given to competent and highly accountable, transparent state agencies, not the privacy of people's homes where they can treat their children however they like, in effect, and those responsibilities should be abandoned when children are competent to make all of their own decisions (like, 12, 13).

Of course any domestic violence should be treated legally the same as non-domestic violence and parents should be jailed and fined for hitting their children.

The point is that, some degree of state or community intervention is really required to keep parents from nessessarily exploiting their children (they can barely help it, its part of the nature of the family structure). This doesn't nessessarily mean taking children away from their parents if they genuinely want to stay and have the financial indepedence needed to make that decision based on emotional rather then financial self interest...but it does mean taking away the hierarchical and dependent structure of the parent-child relationship, reducing it to an egalitarian familial relationship like that between adult siblings or cousins.

[drain.you]

the state should provide for children's financial, personal and educational needs including cost of housing, food, clothing, ect, and do so indepedently of their parents rather then through their parents.
How can a state provide for a child without going through the parents? I mean, you can't give children allowance for food,clothes,etc, they may waste it/make bad choices with it/lose it/etc. However if you give this money to the parents so that they can provide for the child then the parents could keep some, if not all of the money for themselves.
Also, where is this state aid coming from? Many countries' economies wouldn't be able to support this, especially not in places such as Latin America and African nations.


Of course any domestic violence should be treated legally the same as non-domestic violence and parents should be jailed and fined for hitting their children.
Parents in the UK can be arrested for hitting their children, as far as I know, however I doubt it is very often that children [b]dare[/d] to go forwards and get help from children protection agencies/police. I think the majority of cases of child abuse in the UK are discovered by social services and other people reporting this.

An existing different variation from the nuclear family* is the extended family. The extended family system is used by the Africans, the Middle Easterners, the traditional Jewish family of central Europe, the Spanish of North and South America, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, Indians, the East Asians (Chinese, Japanese etc.) and the Pacific Islanders, extended families are the basic family unit. -Wikipedia Its where majority of a family, ie; mam,dad,aunties,uncles,grandparents,cousins,etc all live together. Unfortunately people used to this system, such as those mentioned above cannot live in this way after moving to the UK and other Western countries (America probably being exception) due to the fact that we don't build houses big enough for this lifestyle.
Extended families are more communistic within the family, however tend to create this 'honouring the family name' stuff which I don't approve of much.

*For anyone who doesn't know what a nuclear family is, the best and probably most well known example is the fictional Simpsons, two hetrosexual parents, a couple of children living under one roof, the mother being housebound in majority of cases.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by drain.you
An existing different variation from the nuclear family is the extended family. The extended family system is used by the Africans, the Middle Easterners, the traditional Jewish family of central Europe, the Spanish of North and South America, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, Indians, the East Asians (Chinese, Japanese etc.) and the Pacific Islanders, extended families are the basic family unit. - Wikipedia. It's where majority of a family, i.e., mam, dad, aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc., all live together.

Yes, the "extended family structure" was well-suited to pre-capitalist forms of class society.

I rather doubt that we would want to "revive it"...by all accounts it was rather unpleasant to live in unless you happened to be the patriarch.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[rioters bloc]

i bought a book about this yesterday actually, with illustrations and all :lol: quite cool. but rather than scan it in, ill direct you to this site instead: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secJ6.html for an anarchist take on it.

[drain.you]

wow, thats a nice article!

Not sure I agree with this, but I also not sure if I understand it, could someone explain this to me please...

Fromm goes on to note that selfishness and self-love, "far from being identical, are actually opposites" and that "selfish persons are incapable of loving others. . . [or] loving themselves..." [Op. Cit., p. 131] Individuals who do not love themselves, and so others, will be more willing to submit themselves to hierarchy than those who do love themselves and are concerned for their own, and others, welfare. Thus the contradictory nature of capitalism, with its contradictory appeals to selfish and unselfish behaviour, can be understood as being based upon lack of self-love, a lack which is promoted in childhood and one which libertarians should be aware of and combat.

That quote is taken from 'J.6.6 But how will a free child ever learn unselfishness?' from the link comrade rioters bloc provided.

I agreed with the majority of that article though questioned the bit above and in general how a person can become unselfish without being told to share, etc.


"in the disciplined home, the children have no rights. In the spoiled home, they have all the rights. The proper home is one in which children and adults have equal rights." Or again, "To let a child have his own way, or do what he wants to at another's expense, is bad for the child. It creates a spoiled child, and the spoiled child is a bad citizen." [Summerhill, p. 107, 167]
A great quote if ever I saw one. Expanding from that I have came up with a little '2 Laws of Freedom'
1) People must not be restricted or harmed by other people
2) People must be free to do as they please so long as it does not contradict with Law1

Dunno what else to say. i advise everyone to read the article, took me a while to get through but I'm glad I took the time to.

[rioters bloc]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 01:33 AM
A great quote if ever I saw one. Expanding from that I have came up with a little '2 Laws of Freedom'
1) People must not be restricted or harmed by other people
2) People must be free to do as they please so long as it does not contradict with Law1
that's pretty much one of the basic tenets of anarchism: everyone should be free to do what they want, as long as it doesn't impinge on the freedom of others.