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I honestly don't have any thoughts on this right now other than we need to discuss this. At the time of me writing this, there are no comments on this post.
This issue is often dismissed, but we Marxists criticize and breakdown every amount of our society in hopes of building a new one, and the role of children and/or childhood shouldn't be an exception to this.
Also, what are your guys' thoughts on the concept of youth liberation? Do you support the idea or reject it? Should it be implemented immediately under socialism, implemented gradually as productive forces grow, or not be considered at all?
I support Marxist abolition of the family and education reforms to get rid of the "factory model of education."
That being said, I don't think getting rid of education entirely, for example, is a good idea.
I support the concept of youth liberation. I can say without a doubt that if I had an "out" from my family, that I would have taken it. Aldous Huxley writes of a concept in his fiction novel Island, where families are assigned to a unit. If children need an escape from their immediate family, they're able to stay with other families in the unit. I think the saying "it takes a village" is true and we've been ignoring it for at least the last century here in the west.
I believe the DPRK is the only nation with direct youth representation in their government, so it certainly is a question many marxist states have considered before.
It's also noticeable with the way we act and talk to children, like when I was a kid I didn't like talking with anyone because adults talked to me in the annoying voice thing and they always used to dismiss what I say and underestimate my level of comprehension.
First thing is that obviously, children are far weaker than adults (I'm not included since I got once into a fight with a 6th grader and lost) there's also knowledge gap from age which creates a power domination dynamic thing.
This also can be a result of self hatred and regret, as we were all young and made dumbass decisions that we look back on and project into kids going through the same.
This also is because of capitalism and the worth of humans being tied to how much value they produce, infact one of the first questions kids get asked is "what do you want to be when you grow up".
I never knew how to engage with kids once I no longer considered myself one, but now that I have kids, it's like they have wiped that from my brain and I can't imagine what it's like to not want to engage with kids. I think that it's a mixed bag in terms of "Are kids treated like humans". There are a lot of people who are still holding onto the notions they were subjected to growing up:
- Kids should be seen and not heard.
- Kids should have respect for adults. (which is almost always code for obedience, not respect)
- "My house, My Rules" aka Authoritarian Centered Parenting.
- Illogical or disproportionate punishment for breach of "the rules".
It seems to me that these "traditional" values in regard to parenting lead to a deficit in trust between parent and child, the child becomes more adept at subterfuge as they attempt to skirt the more illogical rules, and instills a kind of adversarial relationship between the parent and child. Rules like "Don't wear your hat at a restaurant" followed up with "Because I said so" or "Because I'm your Parent and what I say goes" are just the codification of preferences both personal and learned into arbitrary rules. Naturally, when you point out how nonsensical it is, you're met with "That's how my parents were and I turned out fine!". Are_You_Sure_About_That.mp4
Kids are wiser than you think, and if you explain to them why you're asking them to do something, they'll usually get it. Obviously, that depends on their age. One thing I've learned from experience with my toddler is that, if you talk too fast or repeat yourself too quickly or expect them to respond instantly to a question or demand, you're going to have a bad time. They need time to process what you're saying because they're still learning how to process language. Usually, if something is pressing or they're just not listening, you can just redirect them. I've never had this become a huge fight so far. Usually I ask twice, and if that doesn't work, I guide them to the thing we're doing now, and that kind of direction they seem to just get. Do I get the odd tantrum, sure, but that's to be expected. I tend to make sure to loop back after the tantrum and try to empathize and explain what the request was and why. Sometimes, the tantrum is just illogical and you have to just accept that.
To be clear. I'm only synthesizing my own experiences along with the experiences of other parents either personally or online. Some people take their childhood as a blueprint for their parenthood, and others have reflected on their childhood and make attempts to have it not be the blueprint for their parenthood. I want to be as communicative and empathetic with my kids as I can, and to actually hear them when they express how they feel. I know that was something I needed growing up, and I know they'll need it too.
In terms of our social systems and structures surrounding kids, definitely not Humans by any stretch. America is the only nation in the UN that has signed but not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the US played an active role in drafting this bill of child rights, they still have not ratified it. Doing so would require them to completely unearth and rebuild child welfare within their legal system. The primary opponents of these rights are, unsurprisingly, political and religious conservatives such as The Heritage Foundation and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The Heritage Foundation believes that "a civil society in which moral authority is exercised by religious congregations, family, and other private associations is fundamental to the American order" while the HSLDA argues that ratifying these rights would threaten homeschooling in America.
In the majority of US States Corporal Punishment is legal under statues making exceptions to the states law regarding crimes of assault, criminal battery, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual abuse or child abuse. Exceptions to these laws make it nearly impossible to charge a legal guardian of a child with a crime when certain actions are applied to that child. This extends into the public school system, where 17 states still allow for Corporal Punishment as a form of discipline within their public school systems. The practice was deemed "constitutional" by the Supreme Court in 1977. The Court held that the "cruel and unusual punishments" clause of the Eighth Amendment only applied to the treatment of prisoners convicted of a crime. Which, naturally we understand to be pure hypocrisy when you consider how often solitary confinement is used in the American prison system, and how universally accepted it is that solitary confinement is a horrific, life altering, inhumane experience.
You can read all the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child
There are countless examples of children being objected to utterly horrific state violence, from the cartoonishly evil such as being arrested for not using the potty, to the systematically evil conditions within the foster care system: "According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2018, 62% of children placed in foster care were removed from their homes due to abusive neglect, totaling over 160,000 children.". Then consider that states are actively fighting against universal free lunch programs in schools, and that the federal government failed to make permanent the temporary expansion of the child tax credit during covid which brought food insecurity in households with children to a two decade low.
For as much as the reactionaries talk about family values in America, it's clear through their policies and actions that they have no intention of treating kids as anything other than property.
The US "school to prison pipeline" has a double meaning:
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Schools in the US do not adequately prepare children for society, and as a result many fall into poverty and turn to crime to survive.
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Children in US schools are literally treated in a way that takes many elements from how inmates in US prisons are treated.
The presence of "resource officers" in schools also increases the likelihood that a student ends up on the School to Prison Pipeline as administrations defer to the officer as a mechanism for punishment, which often results in criminal charges against the student. Their existence in schools can not even be justified via critical analysis because any inquiry into their "effectiveness" proves that no resource officer in any school building across the country has ever prevented or reduced the likelihood of a mass causality event in the building.
Also it's surprisingly common for minors, as in children, to be tried as adults and be sent to adult prisons in the US.
Why the fuck do you even have a minor judicial system then?
Also, a lot of people seem to think that being a kid means that you just play videogames or whatever all day
Other people have commented on the more important points, so I'm gonna add to this one
The biggest reason a lot of kids do nothing but "stay home and play video games all day" is because they literally have nothing better to do, the car-dependent suburbs that are very common in North America (which are often considered "great places to raise children") leave kids with an inability to do anything (such as hang out with friends or go to public places) without their parents driving them around, so if their parents won't/can't do that then there's nothing really else to do than just stay home, so the kids can't have any real "freedom" until they become old enough to drive
As well, kids often aren't even allowed to be given any level of independence these days, with things as simple as "a kid being outside on their own" (even just within their family's property, if the neighbors are being narcs) being something that can be reported to the police and the parents potentially losing custody over
It's okay though, we're totally not a dystopian police state, right? /s
For real. Growing up in a suburb, the only things that were in walking distance were houses, a park, houses, a convenience store, houses, houses, and warehouses. And our town had that neighborhood watch thing where cops would basically arrest you for being young and outside past curfew.
I dunno what people expect kids to do besides play video games and watch YouTube/twitch/whatever. There's really not much else to spend time on.
Also kids play videogames and browse the internet all day because parents give them no attention.
This is something i recently realized about my childhood and a posible reason as why i have a bad relation with my parents.
Adult supremacy is a real thing. While it is very prominent among American Baby Boomers, it can afflict people of any generation. I believe we as adults have a responsibility to guide and protect youth, not forcefully shape them into some predetermined mold.
Frankly it infuriates me when I see somebody of my age (early 30s) acting just like a damned Boomer and complaining about "kids these days", when those kids are just responding to pressures of a world that adults have forced upon them. The only kind of youth I truly dislike are the alt-right kind.
I cannot speak for any other country, but the US public school experience is designed to beat the kids down until they accept their place within the capitalist system by the time they're 18 years old. Any education that happens in those places is incidental. They're primarily meant for schooling, not education.
Being a teenager was definitely a surreal experience. At school I was expected to write pages-long essays about history and politics without warning. I had to have a litany of formulas memorized and also remember when and how to use them. I needed to know how to analyze dense texts, including ones in middle English.
But outside of school I was treated as an idiot kid who's 5 seconds away from stealing or breaking something at any given moment. The contrast between how I was treated in high school and college is like night and day even though I was doing much, much less schoolwork that was easier in college.
Children are tripping hazards due to their small size and erratic movements.
Solution: Give every child an air horn so they can announce their presence at all times.
Isn't that what we were doing for the first 2 years after birth?
And people rarely, if ever, trip over babies. The solution works!
I was just saying yesterday, ageism is on a bizarre rise recently. Today if someone says "I find everyone 5 years younger than me a stupid child lol" and you don't immediately agree, you're the weird one.
I don't get it where tf it's coming from. One partial theory is that people are so deathly afraid of csam and being accused of being pedos, that they need to virtue signal how they reaaaaaaaaaaaally don't care about kids, but there has to be more to it. Casually hating on boomers is completely okay too, so I just think it's another way of humans hating on everyone that's not like them.
On your last point about adults sneering at children because all they do is play video games and huddle themselves inside; this is patently false and wouldn’t be nearly as prevalent if cities/towns were built for humans rather than vehicles.
Kids and teenagers seldom have an outside public area to hang out in due to them being very inaccessible and worse, needing money to even be there. Loitering laws and prioritizing adults and personal vehicles over the person has created a generation left in limbo.
I’m an adult but cannot drive so getting around and just hanging out is difficult enough for me, let alone a child. I mean, the amount of fear I have crossing the street when there is no stop light is immense, sometimes just existing is seen as an inconvenience.
Here’s an article I found:
Research explores how youth are excluded from public spaces, design practices
There is an article on JSTOR as well but I know that’s not accessible to everyone.
this world is not built for human beings. escaping to a pretend one is basic self preservation
Chad DDR strikes again
It is clear that childrearing in the west has become incredibly cruel, so I would say children are definitely treated like subhumans. I have some theories about why that is, but would love some resources to learn more about it rather than just word vomit some complete conjecture.
These guys are anarchists and you'll find that they often make references to their own fantasy world to make a point, but this episode i think is relevant:
https://srslywrong.com/podcast/284-a-childs-right-to-read-and-know-w-librarypunk/
I was gonna point to the wrong boys’ great series, but I’m glad it’s already posted here.
As someone with siblings, children always seem annoying af to me. Maybe I've been too harsh on them.
My 11 year-old brother has recently been saying he “hates small children.” I used to too, but I’m coming around to them. Even as I’m technically still a child.
Kids 10+ are somewhat worse at controlling their impulses, usually, but other than that they're already just as smart as most adults, especially taking into account they're more up to date on modern tech/developments. I never understood why we as adults collectively decided to act like we're so much superior when we're really not
I think you are giving kids too much credit. Even the most intelligent and emotionally mature children at 10-18 years of a age have a lot of growing up to do.
Technology is a moot point because most gadgets are anti-consumer walled ecosystems and information is highly regulated by big tech companies. Therefore it doesn't necessarily make them smarter.