Kids are up to no good! They're not turning into little clones of me! They're watching the communist tik tok and listening to weird music and doing gender and getting all fruity with each other!
No but really. It seems that a decent subset of American historical oppression is targeted at children as well as minority groups. That may be a controversial thing to say, and I'm not at all equating how awfully we treat kids to chattel slavery. Idk it's a half-formed and new thought but bear with me.
The history of this nation can in part be traced by the history of its attempts to subjugate and assimilate all populations. Everyone must adopt a specific and endorsed American way of thinking, set of morals, and inherent beliefs. From manifest destiny to policing "ethnic" hair into the modern age, all will be assimilated. And after generations upon generations of war, expansion, torture, eugenics, colonization, and forming a society of round holes were all square pegs who fall out are ground to dust, we're closing in on that dream of assimilating all. There will always be horrific racism against American-born people of Latin, Middle Eastern, East Asian, Any Asian, et. all descent, but many Americans do view the national population as a blob of varied ethnic backgrounds unified by core American belief systems.
But there are two intruders to this "harmonious" system. The first are immigrants. We all know how they have been and currently are treated; to go into much detail needs its own dedicated post. But they are from the outside world, not to be trusted, speak funny words and eat weird food, and are viewed with varying degrees of suspicion.
The second set of newcomers to this system are our own children. Younger generations have always mystified and confused the old, perhaps even since the dawn of settled civilization. They're different, and that makes them terrifying. Societally, youth and their culture is viewed as an existential threat. Few if any people consciously recognize this, so let's examine how children are treated and understood. I'm going to list out a sample of practices and attitudes that Americans use in relation to their own young. Pay close attention to the number of entries that depend on children having absolutely no say in the course of their own lives, or so little that it's basically an illusion.
- Residential schools. :amerikkka: had them too and in abundance. This was more of a cultural genocide than really anything to do with kids in the modern sense, but it perfectly exemplifies attitudes to both the foreign and the young. The right people need to be raising children. The wrong people (ethnic and sexual minorities, mostly) could instill the wrong values into kids after all.
- Child Brides (Someplace Under Neith). About half of the country still permits child marriage in some form or another. Children are coerced by parents and their pedophile "fiancées" into signing forms and abruptly being legally fucking married to a man two or three times their own age. The great state of Wyoming defeated a measure that would have alleviated this barbaric practice earlier this year. All over the country, any attempt to end the practice of child brides is met with massive opposition from the religious right. Religiously justified pedophilia isn't an issue for some faraway and "uncivilized" peoples, it's a massive problem right here at home.
- The overall criminalization of youth culture. Curfews and cops in schools and skate park closures and prosecuting children as adults (leading some literal children growing up, getting old, and dying behind bars). I'm not saying that closing down a skate park is as evil as a DA working to get a child sentenced to an entire life inside prison. But I am saying that all of these points paint a mosaic. Anywhere children act independently of direct adult supervision it's suspicious at best.
- Moral panics. Are your kids doing something weird? It's definitely Satan. During the '80s, there was perhaps no better way to keep your kids from having sex than playing Dungeons and Dragons, but it was actually Satan. Heavy metal? The men who sing it look scary and my kid is singing about fighting dragons or whatever the fuck, so that's bad. Hip-hop? Black teens are into it, and that's definitely double trouble. Graffiti is damaging public property and an indication that a kid might be part of a gang, so it's actually a felony to paint a fucking wall. Kids are using the internet, they're using phones, they're using myspace and facebook and tiktok and snapchat and smoking the Devil's Lettuce! It's all different and scary from what I'm used to and what I remember from my own childhood! Gotta ban tiktok, let's ban vapes, let's raise the smoking age to 21! We'll keep military enlistment at 17 or whatever, because what better way to mold your child into a weird and psychologically damaged machine that having them join the literal army?
- Speaking of, the absolutely fucking weird obsession American parents have over their kids' sex lives is revolting. Navigating our sex-crazed society is challenging, and even the most well adjusted child/parent relationship would present challenges in terms of how to best counsel and help the kid figure it all out. Most American parents are not well adjusted and loathe to think of their teenage children developing any sexuality at all. A large chunk of it is religious, of course. I think an under-appreciated factor is that if a kid is going through puberty and soaked through with hormones and wanting to have sex, it's unmistakable that they're almost an adult.
- The Troubled Teen Industry (The Last Podcast on the Left). Teens are moody, withdrawn, developing independence, and are really becoming their own people. Fortunately for the American parental control freak, there is an entire industry dedicated to pathologizing and "treating" the human maturation process.
- Children are basically parental property. It would always be difficult to codify what rights a parent has over a child even in the most enlightened society. America took the easy way out and decided that kids basically get nothing. With a parental signature, children can be married or become child soldiers as discussed above. Based on my anecdotal and personal, but deeply troubling, observations, it's basically impossible to get a court or judge to remove a child from any bad family situation. There is a deep, deep resistance to taking kids away from their parental/owner figures no matter how horribly they're being treated.
That's a sample. I'm sure many societies have many such issues with their kids. I don't know to what intensity some or all of this behavior is present elsewhere in the world. The overall vibe I felt in Germany and the Netherlands when I visited is that youth culture doesn't seem quite as smashed in and shoved into a play-dough machine as American at least.
I don't have a conclusion here really. This post was basically me talking to myself to try to articulate this feeling I've had for awhile. We spent decades screaming about Soviet brainwashing, even making movies about an allegorical alien race coming to steal our brains. We were really screaming into the mirror.
As a parent you should care deeply about your kids and want them to be good people. It’s one of the main things you worry about. Ironically most amerikkkan boomers and x’ers are bad people, but they think they are good people, so they get upset that their kids have access to information which teaches them that their parents are, in fact, bad. But for the parents good is bad, so they get upset when their kids turn out to be good.
If my kid ended up a fascist, a racist, or a homophobe I would be devastated. It would for sure be my life’s greatest failure. I do everything I can to prevent that from happening. This is the same thing in reverse.
Kids are absolutely an oppressed class. There's a reason we see conservatorship as a fucked up relationship even tho its just an adult having a relationship with an adult thats the same they're expected to have as a child. Honestly one of the best parts of capitalist alienation (to capitalists) is the complete severing of intergenerational relationships and solidarity. I mean look at how folks on this website talk about "anti-homework/betime aktion" ironically like American school isn't one of the most coersive violent institutions that literally everyone in the country is forced to squeeze through.
We've completely normalized giving people no rights for the first 18 years of their life, and if you push back on it at all you're seen as a sus predator trying to gain more access to children.
Pedagogy of the oppressed would be some good reading here thats tangentially related. I can try to find books on youth lib specifically
Theres only bedtimes cuz we have kids getting up before the sun is even up so they can catch a bus to their Little Prison. They could just go to bed when they're tired if they didnt live regimented lives like little soldiers/prisoners. It's way more stupid and embarassing to pretend there isn't a conversation worth having around it.
Also I had a whole rant about how circumcision is a barbaric practice that's just laughed off if anyone brings it up, but my leaky memory kinda voided it already
Good take. Fascists are out there rn screaming about trans kids, and meanwhile, they're absolutely fine with doing genital mutilation post birth, and forced gender assignment on intersex newborns. Shits fucking crazy. I would fight a doctor if I had an intersex child and they tried to "correct."
That whole topic is tainted by MRAs constantly bringing it up and trying to claim victim status
It's really annoying that they fixate on this, but there's a legitimate and huge grievance there. Infant genital mutilation belongs in the distant past along with child brides and child soldiers.
Does someone I hate have a correct take on a valid issue? Well now I don't wanna >:-[
My in-laws consider one of their failures as parents to be that their daughters don’t think exactly like they do. They’ve said this explicitly.
If I ever have children they'd better call me a lib for declining to share my toothbrush
I always wanna ask parents like this what they thought of their own parents
iirc the reason we didn't sign onto it is because our child labor laws don't meet the requirements. And with those being rolled back in some places...
This is the first UN vote map I have ever seen where Israel didn't just mirror the US vote
Iirc for a while it was just the US and like South Sudan but then South Sudan finally got its shit together
I think America's hatred of youth and youth culture is uniquely atrocious. America's culture and social structure both fetishizes youth and demonizes it simultaneously. Kids, teens, and young adults are constantly told to "grow up" and we create an increase anti-youth society. America punishes kids for not being kids, but demands they act like adults. It's just some wild catch-22 shit. I can't imagine growing up today. Don't get me wrong I think I got a pretty raw (like most of us) coming up but I think these young katz have it worse.
It's really bad for all youth. Black and white, gay and straight, everything beyond and in-between. We have utterly sand-blasted away young people's ability to just be young people. It's horrible. I'm not an antinatalist, but I don't see anything reason to have a kid these days. We treat them terribly. They are basically some sort of sub-citizen. They are like large pets.
We don't like kids be kids we turn into consumers. We don't let teens be teens, we turn them into stocks. We don't equip young adults for adulthood at all, we turn them into "independent self-interested actors in a rational market who must make the right move all the time or it's their fault for their suffering". Youth in general are like you said parental property. We treat real property better than we treat youth.
It's really dreadful because childhood should not suck, it should be rad as hell. It should be full of fun, expression, safety, a general feeling of being loved by someone(s), a sense of belonging both socially and geographically, and an eager excitement to discover about yourself and others. Adulthood doesn't even have to suck either, but it sucks for us we make it suck for them too. Real crabs in a bucket mindset on a social scale.
It's true. The situation for children in this country is appalling. The mere existence of child marriages and the fact that they are effectively politically defended in red states is still mindblowing to me :amerikkka-clap:. I think another aspect that's tangentially related is that children literally have no protection for their own bodies in school - some deranged motherfucker comes into schools and shoots a bunch of kids on a regular basis. And ultimately, the voices of those kids usually end up being silenced. Sometimes they break through but nothing ever happens because truly. Our society doesn't give a shit about kids.
Cw: Transphobia
spoiler
The current crop of legislation coming through red states that aims to intervene in trans kids being able to get life saving medicine (:amerikkka:) essentially aims to kill children. If you are trans, you may understand how difficult of a situation it can me. Dysphoria sucks. I'm an adult and it sucks so bad I get suicidal thoughts. In trans spaces, we can see children hurting from these same thoughts, but for them I think its stronger and more dangerous because they have a harder time coping. But this comes down to reactionaries wanting to literally cleanse the country of "square pegs", anyone who is different really and doesn't conform. And it's fucking disgusting and makes me :guts-rage:
Yeah so idk what else to say here, but your post is very good. Thank you for effort posting about a subject that gets laughed off a lot
There's basically no way for kids to exist outside of home or school that isn't criminalized. Kids can't be in malls alone. If they go to the park nextdoor nazis will call the police on them. All the skate parks are shut down and skating is illegal in some places. It's not common, per se, but there are horror stories of police arresting parents because they let their eight year old walk down to the cornerstore. Or their twelve year old. Or they left a 14 year old "Unsupervised". Kids being outside at all is considered extremely suspicious. People are terrified of kids being kidnapped or crimed, totally ignoring that violent crime is down and the source of child abuse is almost always family members.
They can get arrested and jailed for minor disciplinary infractions at school, doubly so if they're a minority. Zero Tolerance policies put bullied kids in an impossible situation where they can't fight back and the administration generally doesn't intervene until someone is seriously injured or dead.
It's all very fucked up and inhuman. Ironically most of what I know about the Trouble Teen/Kidnapping and Torturing Children industry comes from survivors talking about their experiences on TikTok.
I recommend the trueanon coverage of troubled teen stuff. Brace got sent to one and escaped as a youth.
This was one of the things that I was surprised to see when I lived in Japan, because it's so totally different.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japanese-young-children-solo-commute-subway-school/
His journey begins with a 10-minute walk to the station, where he swipes his card like a veteran commuter. There are trains to catch, a transfer to make and then another walk - all alone at just seven years of age.
"I was so worried!" said his mom, Yumi Sato, but just at the beginning. In Japan, parents are encouraged to let their kids go to school alone. In fact, it's mandated at Sato's school.
"It's a culturally indoctrinated understanding that children are supposed to be independent by the time they start grade school, really, so that's age six," said Teru Clavel, a Japanese-American sociologist now living in Tokyo.
horror stories of police arresting parents because they let their eight year old walk down to the cornerstore.
This sounds like a GenX meme shared in a facebook group
If you Google "parent arrested for letting child walk to park" the first four hits are news articles about separate incidents where it happened, then you start getting some of the same stories repeating. I'm not sure how widespread it actually is though.
One of those trouble teen cult compounds tried to indoctrinate a young Paris Hilton.
I wish I could afford a therapist just to talk about the bizzare bs my parents put me through. I went to one once before my parents pulled me off their insurance but I was in such a bad mental space I couldn't put anything into words. It really felt like I just wasn't alive until I finally left. Like my entire teen years and into my early twenties was a write off, I was a zombie that only very recently got to experience being alive.
I can relate all too well to that feeling of zombification. It was a combo of homeschooling/undiagnosed gender dysphoria for me, but you have my deepest sympathies. Are you doing any better, or at least less shitty, these days?
I'm still dealing with the issues of not really socializing with people as a teen but I'm doing as good financially as I ever have. I'm saving money and have a loose plan on getting a small home so I'm not having to pay rent anymore and then I want to save up for my own gender affirming surgery and stuff.
I'm glad you at least have a financial cushion. Money stress is one of the worst stressors there is
Absolutely. Who was the one that said "if I could afford therapy in America I wouldn't need it"
:fidel-salute: Sounds like you're describing my life comrade. It does get better. There are therapists that are willing to charge on a sliding scale for people who can't afford normal rates/insurance that actually covers anything mental health related. Its worth trying to find one when you're ready. I finally did in my early 30s and it was pretty life changing for me.
You're not alone in this thinking. There's a body of work out there about children's abolition.
I think I've seen that name in passing, but skimmed over it because at first glance it sounds like abolishing children in an anti-natalist sense. I should read up on it.
Yeah, I can see that! But it's actually theory about how children constitute an oppressed class denied autonomy, rights, and protections they deserve because of the bizarre notion that parents can do anything they want to their kids as long as they don't hit them, or in a lot of places hit them hard enough to break bones. I think it has a lot of validity. We can protect kids without dictating every aspect of their life through violent coercion like our society does now.
Actually, there's some overlap with other kinds of domestic abuse there; Abuse victims can't leave for economic reasons, so the abuse continues. Kids can't leave because cops will run them down and kidnap them and turn the over to abusers, and taking a kid in to give them a safe place to sleep and protect them from their family might get you charged with felony kidnapping. Just fucked up.
I need to read up on this. Issue is that I would have even more pent-up rage and absolutely no outlet. Adults can be helped in some form - a couch to crash on, help finding a job, whatever. But if I took in a child running from that situation I'd just end up in prison and the kid would end up back in their abusive situation.
They know they should be.
I'll say something more substantial once I read it all, because I agree and have some relevant experiences
Misogyny passes from father to son. Break that chain, and misogyny is gone. Forever. And this only need be done once.
That's why they're so terrified of it. That's why it's good that kids spend more time in school away from their parents. Why do you think they're so heavily into homeschooling?
Mothers can also perpetuate (internalized) misogyny. So can teachers at school.
It comes from fathers teaching their sons. No fathers, no misogyny.
:jesse-wtf: yeah I'm sure the centuries of patriarchal mindsets can be eliminated by just men
Yes, if you mean it would go to absolute zero in a single generation, then yes, you are technically correct. The best kind of correct. There would be a huge difference and it would die out quickly. Misogyny would be as dead as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
TrueAnon also did a series on the Troubled Teen Industry, one of the hosts was in one of those hellholes as a kid. Series is called The Game.
The Game should win some kind of award. It's TOP TIER but holy fucking hell is it hard to listen to. They re-enact a group session like Brace went through as a kid as an opener for the 4th part and Jesus christ it's hard to get through
It's worth it. You will get a lot of valuable information but holy hell, especially cause Brace had to go through it personally, it's a lot.
Just listened to the whole thing.
Jesus Christ. I won’t be sleeping tonight…
For sure. I’d never really heard about any of that shit. Ended up crying alone in my apartment for a while, then took a walk around my neighborhood to reset.
I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Brace to have to process all that in such a public way.
This comes up on hexbear every now and then. There’s a few good articles out there on misopedy, the hatred of children. It’s a common insult among even communists to “stop acting childish” or to “grow up,” but in my experience children are among the easiest groups in america to radicalize because they really are fucked in so many ways. Boomers are almost universally much worse than the vast majority of children.
I love my kids. I’m still homeschooling them through the pandemic but it’s getting harder. My spouse is pressuring us to send them back to school and their friends in the neighborhood seem to not want to hang out with them anymore. I’m leaning toward sending them back even though I really don’t want to. It drives me nuts whenever I see parents at the grocery store with unmasked kids. Any hexbears who want to advise or criticize me, you’re welcome to.
You could ask your children what they want, and discuss options with them. They deserve a say in their lives.
Yeah, that’s what I do. They want to keep homeschooling. I’ve also been working on moving us to China so we can all be safer. We’ve learned a lot about what life is like there, the good and the bad, and they’re open to going. I also remind them frequently that they can return to public school whenever they want. They have never said yes.
Huh, that's great. Then I don't know enough to feel comfortable giving advice.
The brain worms of the boomer and boomer-like snowflake class.
Something that I've realized as I enter my 40's.
A significant chunk of the "adults" around me when I was younger (and to this day) never really thought of me as an adult/peer. I could be married, employed, doing all the things you are supposed to be doing as an adult, and still would be viewed as a "child" by somebody for no other reason that I'm younger than them by some arbitrary amount of time. I'll be in my 60's and they'll be in hospice taking their last breaths and they'll still have it in their minds that I'm a child that can't take care of myself.
The generations after them are still acting like that too- it's a systemic issue we never actually solved and it'll continue until it IS solved.
At some point, our society's ability to shepherd its children into adulthood and step back to let them take over just .... stopped.
