Is parenting a left issue?

[Kukulofori]

As a tranny I know full well how parents can screw over their children, which seems like the kind of authoritarian nonsense we hate.

Now obviously you can't abolish parenting but there has to be some kind of alternative to living with your parents until you're well into adulthood. What do you propose, and how do we argue for this?

[Ptah_Khnemu]

I really don't know. I do know that poverty has a bad effect on families in many was, and perhaps with it's elimination we can largely do away with bad parenting. Other than that, it'd be tough to make a convincing argument against families.

[Oneironaut]

Now obviously you can't abolish parenting but there has to be some kind of alternative to living with your parents until you're well into adulthood. What do you propose, and how do we argue for this?

Traditional family structure is a left issue. The primary way we would combat the dominant authoritative parent/child relationship is eliminate a child's economic dependence on her parents. IMO children are often born into debt. Parents use their economic power over their child to determine her decisions (The old do this and your out of the will scenario). All that I can propose that if a child wants to stick around with her family even after economic dependence has been eliminated, that's perfectly fine with me. If she doesn't, society will find her another care taker. I see children keeping with their parents at least until maturity except in some exceptional cases where society would intervene.

[Potemkin]

I think the idea should just be to expand the family out past the nuclear. Ideally, the "village" or neighborhood/community would raise the child collectively, allowing the child to benefit from the wide range of experience of community members. This would also take some of the pressure off of the parents, which often happens in other cultures.

For instance, the neighborhood could have a community child care facility, where parents can come and bring their children. The children get to interact with other children and the parents get to interact with other parents, all sharing the responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of the children.

Also, under an anarchist society, relationships with everyone would be more intimate, so you'd have an atmosphere of everyone watching each other's back (solidarity).

Here's a quote from a pamphlet I came across:

"Childcare has become a task of the neighborhood, with parents and children interacting with other neighborhood families. Parents no longer feel the isolation and stress of being alone with a small child every waking moment. Instead, both children and parents have companions in the community. Groups of children play with one another – always some coming and others going – as groups of adults supervise, each parent or neighborhood member supervising when time allows. The caretakers are equally responsible for all children in the group, taking the burden off of individual adults. Children benefit from the experience and diversity of the community.

"Educational needs are met with free schools that teach children about the world around them and cater to their talents and needs. Children are free to grow and pursue their interests. Grade levels (as well as grades as indicators of comprehension) have been abolished – replaced with levels in each subject. A child can be at a reading level of 2, but a mathematics level of 4. Much of the formal separation between 'education' and the rest of the child’s life has been removed, with frequent field-trips, extracurricular activities, and parental and neighborhood involvement all factored into the educational process, allowing children to think critically and independently, with access to a wide variety of educational content and methods. Children who are eager self-learners, or those that do not fare well in the formal setting, may have little, if any, involvement with it."

[jake williams]

The treatment of young people is part of a system of oppression almost totally analogous to the treatment of women or of non-white people. There are some important differences. Most parents sincerely care about their children, but most husbands sincerely care about their wives and maybe always have. I think in relationships with children we need to recognize the fact that there are things they don't know about the world and they have to be taught by other people, but this is a pretty narrow mandate for the sorts of authoritarian forms we see.

I can elaborate if you'd like. I wrote a piece on the topic for the local student 'alternative' magazine.

[ev]

We should have the collective ownership of children! :laugh:
I think society has a responsibility to children in general not just the parents and I agree that conventional family structures are a problem, society needs to be more dynamic to tackle these issues and this can only be accomplished by the implementation of leftist politics as mentioned by jammoe 5# and Potemkin 4# - excellent suggestions.

[Kukulofori]

I'd like to see that, jammoe.

[Plagueround]

I've written a few posts on the subject. Here's my thoughts.



In my experience and opinion, a parent should act as a guide and a mentor to their child, not an authority figure and a disciplinarian. Most of the behaviors children exhibit that we deem unacceptable are because we are expecting them to behave like adults, a request that they do not fully comprehend, nor one they should be expected to.
The question you need to ask when parenting is "Do I find this unacceptable because it could place my child or others in potential harm, teach them destructive or anti-social behaviors, etc.?" or "Do I find this unacceptable because it annoys, embarrasses, or frustrates me?" You would be surprised how often it's the latter, and it will also teach you a lot about behaviors and inhibitions you have that are perhaps unreasonable.

You would be doing a child a disservice to punish them, especially with physical violence, rather than speak to them as you would expect someone teaching you. Obviously there will be times where you will need to restrain a child (attempting to talk it out while they run off into traffic wouldn't be a good idea, but neither would talking it out while a novice in a trade is about to jam their hand in a saw) because they do lack the understanding of the world that you do, but I've never seen a situation where hitting them would do anything other than make them fearful and subservient.

I learned a lot from the infoshop FAQ on parenting, and since applying much of those methods my son's progress and our relationship has made amazing leaps and bounds. My son is well behaved, but he is not restrained from being a child or a person.


Children are not capable of being fully autonomous early on and need guidance and help. This is not to say they are unthinking robots, but they do need to be taught how the world works. I am entirely comfortable with "violating my child's autonomy" by grabbing him if he's about to run out into the street, (politely) taking things from him in a store and placing them back on the shelf, or not allowing him to play with the large assortment of chemicals people keep under their sinks. What should be discouraged is the authoritarian and demeaning parenting that many people use, approaching their duty as a parent as a prison guard or police figure. There will always be a need for a certain amount of "authority" over those that are not yet capable of taking care of themselves. The problems the family unit faces these days is more a lack of respect for a child's ability to process these situations and grow to understand them without talking down to them, yelling at them, or hitting them.

As for the notion that children should not be influenced by their parent or guardian, but rather society...I think that ignores the diversity of human thought. A communal society does not mean the end of different approaches, thoughts, and attitudes toward living. If anything I would agree with Oscar Wilde and say a society under socialism would be more diverse and individualistic. You are not going to have a set standard for society to raise a child by. Certainly the consensus society has on certain matters would deter most people from abuse, as it does now, but the notion that doing away with family units would eliminate the complex relationship between guardians and children ignores human diversity too much.

I have a feeling that a society under socialism or communism would not see the end of the family unit so much as an extension and furthered development of it, where we view more and more people as part of our family or community. Simply because children are not confined to one style of guardianship does not mean that some won't choose to primarily live with one person, and others may prefer to "bounce around". Again, children are every bit as diverse as the rest of us.

[jake williams]

Children are not capable of being fully autonomous early on and need guidance and help. This is not to say they are unthinking robots, but they do need to be taught how the world works.
Agreed.


I am entirely comfortable with "violating my child's autonomy" by grabbing him if he's about to run out into the street, (politely) taking things from him in a store and placing them back on the shelf, or not allowing him to play with the large assortment of chemicals people keep under their sinks.
I am totally comfortable violating the autonomy of my mother, my friends, my neighbours, or random people on the street if they're running out into the street, stealing, or playing with poison. It's not about childhood - it's about caring about others.