Contra Aella on chattel childhood

Aella has a post where she argues that today's parents don't sufficiently respect the independence of their children:

Every culture throughout history has justified the abuse of treating their children as property by arguing this is good for them and good for civilization. Kids need to learn this stuff to be functioning members of society! It’s good to learn discipline! You can’t have kids just sitting around playing video games all day! Not everyone is self-directed autodidacts!

Sure, I know that argument. But hopefully if my parents had said to you “do you expect her to learn good morals if we spare the rod?” you would have said “have you even tried other methods?”

It's a hard hitting piece, and it certainly makes me, and presumably other parents, feel uncomfortable.

Unfortunately I don't actually see much of an alternative. Aella seems to think it's as easy as not treating your children as property: 

When I was very young, I remember adults treating me like I wasn’t a person, but this didn’t upset me quite as much as the fact that no adult seemed to remember what it was like to be a kid, or else they certainly would have taken my feelings much more seriously, like they did for other adults.

I was terrified that I, too, would one day grow up and forget what it was like to be a child, and would also stop taking other children seriously. So I swore to myself I wouldn’t forget - I chose the phrase “Don’t forget, I’m a person!” and deliberately sent it up the chain across my older selves by regularly meditating on the phrase and the importance with which it was carried. I’m an adult now, but I have not forgotten what it was like to be a child.

However Aella doesn't have any children, and I suspect that once she does she will discover that she ends up needing to discipline her children far more often than she expected.

So I think it's worth going over the different reasons why I, as a parent of a 5,3, and 1 year old, can't just let my kids do what they want. Everything here only applies to very young children, and I know that teenagers are a whole different ball game.

Most parents aren't perfect: 

I'm going to start off by saying that sufficiently skilled, patient and kind parents can handle most of these situations without ending up at loggerheads with their child. Jefftk seems like just such a parent and his posts have given me a lot to think about. 

Unfortunately most parents are of average intelligence, busy, and tired. If your solution to chattel childhood doesn't account for that, it's not a general solution (but may work for you as an individual parent).

So read this less as "parenting is impossible", and more as "being a good parent is really hard, and don't blame parents who you think are stifling their kids independence".

And every child is different. Read all of these as arguments about particular types of children, not fully general statements about all children.

Children are a danger to themselves...

There's the obvious point here, namely that toddlers will run straight in front of a passing car as if they have a desperate desire to get crushed. Your only option is to pull them away whenever you see them heading off into the road and making the situation sufficiently unpleasant that they won't treat it as a game and go straight back out the moment your back is turned.

Even when they get older they still can't be fully trusted by themselves. Our 5 year old knows not to go on the road, but doesn't always look when he's crossing the neighbours drive. If we want him to eventually be allowed to walk places by himself, we have to continuously drill into him that checking a drive before you cross it is important.

But there's a more general point, which is that because children can't keep themselves safe in a large variety of situations, you can't give them the independence they crave, which drives some of the problems discussed later on.

... and others

Aella recognises that sometimes you do have to step in:

I don’t mean we should let kids do whatever they want - we don’t let adults do whatever they want; if they smashed your property we’d put them in a locked room until they calmed down, if they hit you you’d hit back in self defense. Failing to have boundaries against children much as you would adults is also dehumanizing!

But good treatment of children should likely be closer to how you would treat a parent with dementia. Sometimes forcibly controlling their body is necessary to prevent damage to themselves or others, and you definitely don’t let them go outside alone, and there will certainly be many grey areas where you’re conflicted about how much to override their agency. But at least you’re starting from a baseline of treating them as a whole person!

However what I think Aella is missing is just how common this is. Absent parent intervention children will be hitting each other every 5 minutes. They'll do it to see how the other child reacts, because the other child's annoying them, because they want the other child's toy, or because they're jealous that their younger sibling is taking their parent's attention.

The only reason my children hit each other "just" a couple of times a day is because they have learnt, through lots of unpleasant interactions, that if they do hit they will get in more trouble than its worth.

Parents have a life too

I agree that homeschooling can teach kids far more efficiently than school. I agree that schools are deeply problematic on many levels.

Unfortunately my wife and I work, and even if we didn't we don't have the sort of personality that would cope with looking after children all day - we are drained every weekend and school vacations take a lot of mental preparation.

So we don't have much choice but to send them to school. And if they're in school, unfortunately they're going to have to do homework, however pointless it is, because otherwise they'll just end up in a spiral of trouble at school which will make them far more miserable than just forcing them to do their homework. At least though I can help them speed through it by teaching them how to use ChatGPT at a young age.

Similiarly my kids often want to go to a park, or shops, or wherever, but they can't yet go on their own. So I am forced to say no to them if it doesn't work for me - especially as I have 3, each with their own demands.

It's for your own good you know!

When my children don't have enough sleep, they are grumpy. They will spend the entire day tantruming whenever something doesn't go exactly their way, and exactly their way includes things like dropping a toy on the floor, getting too much/little milk with their cereal, or me not instantly responding to their every demand.

This obviously doesn't make anyone happy, least of all themselves. But left to their own devices they'll fall asleep at about 11 in a pile of toys on the floor, wake up at 5 AM, and proceed to have a horrible day. So I am forced to put them to sleep at 7.30, and train them not to wake up till 6 by forcing them to go back to bed if they wake up early until their body clock adjusts and they do that naturally. Then every time they have a late night or the clock changes we have to do it again.

Many kids will also refuse to go to the doctor, learn to read, get dressed, go to the toilet etc. without a steady mix of carrot and stick. I don't think an attitude where your child can decide whether or not they should wear a diaper for the rest of their life actually leads to them being better off.

But can't you still treat them like a person?

Of course I love my kids, and I definitely view them as people - they each have incredible and unique personalities.

That said, for all the reasons above I end up needing to override my children's decisions and force them to do what I want them to do about every 5 minutes. As they grow older that number decreases, but slowly.

At that frequency it's not practical to try to reason with them each time, or have an attitude where in principle they have autonomy but in this one instance we have to override it. Instead what actually works, and in fact reduces the amount of pain and suffering for both child and parent is to have a clear rule where the child just has to do whatever the parent says, and that's that. If the child understands that, it allows you to get whatever needs to be done out the way quickly and painlessly and move on to them doing what they want to do. If you sometimes give in, then everything turns into a fight, which actually ends up far less pleasant for everyone.

I don't like this. I hated the idea of calling my child a "good boy" just for listening to me, as opposed to acting morally. But unfortunately, it's what works, and I, mediocre parent that I am, don't actually have a better option.

However I do try and remember whenever my children request something to stop and think about it for a second instead of automatically saying no. It's easy to get into a habit of refusing every time they ask to go to a restaurant, or a park, or a shop that you never say yes, even when it does work for you and them. Fighting this habit is an important task.

Discuss