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.
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.
: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.
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.
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.
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.
One of those trouble teen cult compounds tried to indoctrinate a young Paris Hilton.
I recommend the trueanon coverage of troubled teen stuff. Brace got sent to one and escaped as a youth.
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.
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
The kids are out here with their stiletto knives, combing their hair, and menacingly snapping while approaching me from the alleyway. They must be sent to Doctor Pedd O. Phil’s Youth Recalibration Camp in the deep woods of Idaho.
Seen a lot of
Won’t some one think of the children Hysteria mostly from boomers. Who’s kids are on their 30s. It’s just a repeat of 80s hait metal Hysteria
My parents always treated me as a person, just an inexperienced one, which is why it was such a shock for me to go to school and to learn that I suddenly wasn’t that anymore. At home I was part of a group and was allowed agency and most of the time had a say in what happened to me, orI could discuss rules and try to find a compromise with my parents. My opinions were probably often suboptimal, but they and my feelings were treated seriously and discussed with me. In school then all agency was taken from me, my opinions were disregarded, not becauze they were bad, but because they came from someone who didn’t have the right to decide anyway, if a rule or ruling was unfair, unjust or senseless, we were just supposed to swallow it and not fight. This led to me never really having any revolts against my parents (why would I, we were equal), but constant stress and conflict with teachers and administration. Probably the start of my radicalisation.
Your parents sound unironically amazing
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
:amerikkka-clap:
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.
They know they should be.
I’ll say something more substantial once I read it all, because I agree and have some relevant experiences
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.
More worm than brain
If I ever have children they’d better call me a lib for declining to share my toothbrush
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
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 >:-[
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.”
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
100% correct, no notes.
I have a theory that part of the function of the “where is your child now?” stuff that really curtailed kids’ freedom in America in the second half of the twentieth century was a reaction to the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam movements. Both were prominently participated in by kids, the anti-war one especially, and when society goes from letting kids have a significant portion of the day to themselves in between school and supper to basically forcing them to go from one controlled location straight to another with no in-between, all of that potential youth-lead political organization falls apart because it doesn’t have anything to support it anymore.
I don’t think it was the primary driver - after all most kids weren’t joining the Students for a Democratic Society - but it is a relevant secondary reason. The primary driver was almost certainly “property values”. I remember one of my only interactions with the HOA where my parents lived concerned plans for a playground being voted down based on the logic that children playing outside would somehow lower everyone nearby’s home value (they also made the equally-bad argument that teens would hang out at the child’s playground to smoke). Multiply this interaction by a million HOAs around the country and eventually even the kids whose parents don’t demand that they come straight home still end up going home anyway because there’s nowhere else for them to go.
…part of the function of the “where is your child now?” stuff that really curtailed kids’ freedom in America in the second half of the twentieth century was a reaction to the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam movements.
God dammit I think you’re on to something
lower everyone nearby’s home value (they also made the equally-bad argument that teens would hang out at the child’s playground to smoke).
God damn mother FUCKING hoa bullshit. I hate them I hate them I hate them so fucking much little elected clans of dukes ruining everything even for those of us who do manage to buy a home
I remember that argument was when I learned that my parents were NIMBYs. It was honestly a shock, they’re lib but I has assumed they would want a playground in the neighborhood considering that at that time there were six kids in the house with absolutely nothing to do inside walking distance.
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.
