I feel exhausted whenever I hear conservatives fall upon the mindlessly affective “think of the children” defense of their barbarous proposals for school curriculums and general social regressivism. Their pleas for the preservation of childhood innocence feel like insincere ploys, but are still flawed even if taken at face value.
The first problem is that a child knowing of the “woke” world does no damage to their innocence. When I think of maintaining a child’s pure vision of the world, I am far more concerned with the reality that people die and kill each other than I am with the fact that some kids have two mothers or two fathers. The second is that when we inflate bubbles of blissful ignorance for our children, we are doing them a great disservice to stall our own discomfort. Eventually, bubbles burst, no matter how hard one tries to inflate them. And, the aftershocks of a bubble bursting are greater if they are maintained for longer. A child is only distressed at the sight of a gay couple when told their whole life that such things didn’t exist. The older the child, the worse the distress. But I do not intend to debate the question of how to introduce children to a cruel world here. I instead only highlight it as an example of the efficacy of appeals to children and young people. I believe that this speaks to a fundamental good in human nature, even if it is weaponized by the misguided and disingenuous for bad policy. We should want what’s best for our kids. But there are far too many who don’t, and not as a consequence of misguided aspirations, but rather an apathy: an absence of aspirations entirely.
I’m concerned about the way we speak about and treat children in this country. I’ve seen communities formed online around the respectable choice to not have kids mutate into resentment of people who have children — or worse, of the children themselves. I’ve seen children called “crotch goblins,” “ankle biters,” “fuck trophies,” and “screech demons.” I doubt that these phrases were crafted outside of a joke context, but I’ve seen them used as insults directed against children. I’m not comfortable with other people calling a child a “fuck trophy” in full seriousness, and I don’t sympathize with people who cast scornful glances at children for existing, especially as third spaces for children to interact and socialize are actively vanishing. However, the bulk of my concerns lie largely with trends and customs outside of this (relatively niche) subculture.
There’s at least a tacit cultural acceptance amongst parents in the middle and upper classes of charging adult children for rent to live in the homes they grew up in. This is at least an improvement from another frequent custom: tossing your kids from the nest at 18 entirely, forcing them to make it on their own. Both are deeply problematic practices, as is the stigma around living with your parents as a young adult, prevalent also in the suburbia I was raised in. Such a stigma is incompatible with a world where housing prices are astronomically high. It’s one thing to prepare your child to survive and have realistic expectations for the world. It’s another to hoard your wealth from your child and lock them out of the home you raised them in.
There’s a persistent anxiety within parenting circles of “spoiling” your children. I can understand the concern, as I have frequently expressed disdain for our country’s most spoiled men for their inability to be decent people. At least part of their indecency is undoubtedly a consequence of their unearned wealth and power. Nobody likes a spoiled brat. But we’ve overcorrected. Look no further than the shocking disparity in generational wealth between Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. Gen Z is not looking to fare any better. I ask: What purpose does withholding your wealth from your children — as so many parents now do — accomplish? A healthy, decent, caring society wouldn’t allow for younger generations to have less than their parents. They also wouldn’t bomb other children in pursuit of certain foreign policy objectives, but that’s another discussion.
I acknowledge the obvious truth that raising a child is a difficult and burdensome task, but I also believe that shouldn’t override the fact that children deserve to be treated with compassion. I don’t see that compassion in America, from moaning about “crotch goblins” or “ankle biters” that exist solely as emotional and financial siphons, to the persistent popularity and resurgence of “tough love,” if there even exists such a thing.
I call upon parents to reorient their perspectives on how to best raise their children. While many flood school board meetings as valiant culture warriors standing up for the youths, they also charge their “fuck trophies” rent and watch them struggle to make ends meet, all in the name of the conservative cult of individualism. Parents need to look at what they themselves are reinforcing to their children if they actually care about them. Right now too many just blame gay people. In my younger years, I saw kids my age gunned down mercilessly in schools, and the adult response was to treat them — and kids like me — as acceptable casualties towards a “greater good.” I don’t wish to impose a similar maliciousness on our children going forward.
