Reproductive Labour - Tumblr Posts
They abolished slavery (well, even that is debatable), and yet about 2.4G people (UNICEF 2023) do not have any rights to self-determination and are completely at the mercy of one or two guardians just for the crime of being under 18. There's a certain logic to it, of course, kids are stupid and are usually unable to fully understand the impact of their decisions or provide for themselves, so they need a caretaker. Sometimes it is necessary to submit to authority in order for society to function as intended, that's also why we have states, for example.
However, we also acknowledge that anyone placed in a position of authority must be able to be questioned and replaced, and that regulations should be kept to a minimum. We have elections to replace politicians (however ineffective at ensuring democracy they may be), the abusive nature of private ownership and wage labour is only seen as justified by the mainstream because you freely enter contracts and can exit them (although when the alternative is living on the street, your actual freedom is dubious at best), and people would go crazy if the state mandated a curfew without a very good reason. For the disabled, which are the closest group to children, we give the person as much autonomy as possible and only refer to the guardian where strictly necessary. Even child adoption is a years-long, arduous process with absurdly harsh requirements. Somehow, this all goes out of the window whenever the administered is a child and the administrator is their parent. The parent gets the final say in any- and everything the child does, irrespective of the child's being 2, 9, or 17 years of age. Even when an older sibling is removed from the parent's custody for horrific acts of abuse (which is extremely rare compared to the prevalence of domestic violence), even when such parent is a repeat offender, so-called "parent's rights" keep the next victim at the mercy of their soon-to-be abuser. Children have no rights and only the barest of protections.
From another point of view, other positions comparable to parenthood, such as teachers, managers, cops, or politicians, are all remunerated. Parents, on the other hand, only get meager subsidies that might barely cover the child's food and housing, let alone their clothes, school supplies, and leisure. In America, mothers even have to pay to give birth (while not being allowed abortion). Daycares are paid for in most of the world. tl;dr: positions of authority are responsibilities, not rights ∧ parenthood is a position of authority ⇒ parenthood is a responsibility, not a right also parenthood should be remunerated
there was backlash from homeschooling "parents rights" advocates in my area before because of a daycare teaching kids about consent...all they learned is that you don't have to accept unwanted physical intimacy. one scenario that happened is a parent told her toddler boy to kiss a toddler girl in class. toddler boy comes back and says that toddler girl didn't want a kiss. it turns out the kids were taught that you don't touch someone if they say "no". parents thought this was ridiculous. I felt crazy hearing them talk about it, why in the world would you be upset by kids respecting each others boundaries, and why are you asking your toddlers to kiss each other in the first place as if they're toys and not human beings?