Taking the Kids Away
When it comes to parenting, I’m a radical socialist, y’all — for realz!
Somebody’s like, “This queen is talking about taking people’s kids away.” I guess I am, except even the notion that someone’s children can be taken away from them carries this underlying fallacy that people own the children under their care. I commend anyone who dares usher in another human being biologically or through other labor. That’s in many ways the prime directive for all life (one we fail to prioritize, if you ask me). If we desire a world full of people (a topic for another day) somebody certainly has to make the people. That is where the individual responsibility comes to an end IMHO.
It takes way more than a lucky sperm and eager egg to bring a person into the world. Unless two people, who are biologically capable of successfully mating and bearing kids, spend their entire lives in isolation, having no contact with any other living organisms, those people are not doing it alone…not even close. To create life requires heavy lifting from a lot of players. For starters, everybody is born. That is the first huge public assistance program. No one would be in the position to do anything unless they got born and raised. That’s like a quarter century of output from doctors, parents, teachers, advisors and a whole lot of other people (and other beings) who make sure an individual gets to the place they can pop out a human. Society and accompanying infrastructure—a complex array of shit working together—serves as a lifelong foundation…for everybody…period.
According to my shrink, and no reason to question [note: since writing this, I fired my damn shrink], only about 60% of children get sufficient support from their guardians to prepare them to be healthy, independent and productive contributors to our Western society. That means almost half of parents are fucking it up—they are fucking it up bad. That brood of young people who got cheated of what they needed to successfully launch, become 40% of the population who will likely be having and raising kids.
I went broke toward getting a terminal degree. I was committed to my education enough to get as much as possible and way more than I could afford. Guess what? Not an hour was dedicated in that education to being a parent. I am not equipped to raise a child. I would want as much help as possible with that task, as most people do. If we were being equitable, we’d understand that different people need different levels of support. If we really wanted to serve in the area of child-rearing we would normalize the idea that it really does take a village to raise a child. In fact, the village spares a lot of children from some dangerous situations when families become dysfunctional.
Blah blah blah. That’s a bunch of rhetorical bullshit. Parents don’t need people poking their noses in. Parents know what’s best for their own children (their property). That’s why no children get abused, neglected, or abandoned. Fortunately, for the naturally ingrained genius of every human being, no children have their characters assassinated by toxic families. Certainly no child [trigger warning] would ever be murdered, as no parent would ever do that…ever. Lol [not]!
Child-rearing needn’t be any more a private arena as home ownership or driving a car. We accept that the state should intervene when it comes to keeping homes “up to code.” The state ensures at least a minimal familiarity with the operation of a vehicle and traffic laws (understanding of the law is another topic for a future post). Unless people can pay for the support they need (and look how much people with the resources to spend, make sure their children get the best) they need help. Like the COVID-19 vaccine, some people would rather risk it, making the choice not only for themselves, but those to whom they expose themselves daily.
Sadly, any such required orientation for being a parent would disproportionately impact already vulnerable families, while wealthy people would find (buy) ways around it. I also suspect that what was deemed the “correct” way to rear a child would skew heavily towards White Western norms, traditions, ideologies, etcetera. The Indian Child Welfare Act is an example of that kind of indoctrination when Indigenous people in Canada had their kids kidnapped and westernized without consent.
Yeah, it’s a can of worms. I should probably just stop talking now. Still, something have got to be did!
