Down with Childhood!

The prevalence of violence against womyn and its overwhelming acceptance as a part of life, is some of the most glaring proof of how deep patriarchal social relations run throughout society.

However there is another violence that also permeates our society and it is similarly unquestioned and accepted as normal, and that is violence against children. Last night reading a book called Rethinking the Family I came across an essay by feminist writer Linda Gordon. In the essay Gordon makes an interesting point:

Women, who do most of the labor of child care and have the strongest emotional bonds to children, have fought for and largely won rights to child custody over the last 150 years. Yet women are often the abusers and neglecters of children. Indeed child abuse becomes the more interesting and challenging to feminists because in it we meet women’s rage and abuses of power. (268)

Gordon makes this assertion based on her looking through tons of paperwork filed by social service agencies. In this paperwork, we find that mothers are often perpetrators of child abuse themselves. Though its important to remember that this is also due to the sexual division of labor where womyn have a disproportionate share of responsibility in the caretaking of children.

As Gordon herself notes: “because men spend, on the whole, so much less time with children then do women, what is remarkable is not that women are violent toward children but that men are responsible for nearly half of the child abuse.” (268) Gordon argues that the 2nd wave of feminist movement in the U.S. did little to influence policies that affect children. She attributes this to the fact that many womyn in the 2nd wave movement were young and childless. But she also notes that feminists too often assume that the interests of children and womyn are the same. This assumption disregards the reality of child abuse wherein “severing maternal custody in order to protect children” is sometimes a necessity. I think this is definitely true.

I think that in many instances the welfare of mothers and children definitely does converge. I know in my own house, my mother was often emotionally abusive with us, though admittedly this was often a result of her inability to cope with the violence being inflicted upon her, and the resultant hopelessness, depression and isolation this caused.

That said, I do think that children’s special oppression under capitalism has been way under theorized by feminists. I myself have written and spoken in a romanticized way about the power we see in Mothers, their ability to endure, sacrifice and shelter us. However I think the issue of violence against children brings to the fore a contradiction that we shouldn’t ignore, or try to smooth away because it upholds an unrealistic and thus unsustainable idea wherein men are the perpetrators and womyn are the victims, or the kind ones. This is simply not true. I know that womyn can also be violent and cruel. Power inequalities are power inequalities and their deleterious effects can’t be limited to class, race, or gender.

Child oppression and exploitation seems to be particularly cruel in capitalism because children are either held in sweatshop condition labor (in the ‘underdeveloped world’) or barred and prevented from waged work altogether (in the industrialized world). When children are engaged in waged work they are rarely given any kind of control over surplus value they produce (their wages are often managed by older family members). Because children have little to no rights as workers, they are more exploitable. If their rights as workers were recognized (and legally enforced) waged work might actually empower them in particular ways. We all understand that being a waged worker of any kind in society blows, and that it’s not exactly emancipation to be given the right to be exploited for your labor power. The idea of children working is anathema to many of us who think it should be banned outright, unconditionally. However the idea that children should be barred from being productive members of society is relatively new and I think its important for us all to challenge our assumptions about childhood and what is ‘best for kids’. I remember this issue was brought up by Shulamith Firestone in her book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (a ‘second-wave’ classic, published in 1970).

I always thought Firestone’s chapter on children was pretty brilliant, in that it uses the oppression of women to make some pretty sharp insights into the oppression of children. The chapter, entitled “Down with Childhood” traces the historical evolution of the creation of “childhood” as a distinct period of life.

I have read other evidence backing up Firestone’s observations here. For most of history children were integrated into family life from the day they were born, and this meant they were part of reproducing the family as well. There was no distinguishable language, dress or customs surrounding childhood, distinct or apart from adult life. This is still true for most places in the world where high birth numbers are a product of families using children as a survival strategy—the more children you have the more work you have contributed to the family unit and its survival. Firestone claims that during this time, without the modern educational system having been established yet, children transitioned easily into adult life because they participated in it from the earliest stages, “children were never segregated off into special quarters, schools, or activities. Since the aim was to ready the child for adulthood as soon as possible, it was felt quite reasonably that such a segregation would delay or stymie an adult perspective” (70).

In summary, with the onset of the child-centered nuclear family, an institution became necessary to structure a ‘childhood’ that would keep children under the jurisdiction of parents as long as possible. Schools multiplied, replacing scholarship and a practical apprenticeship with a theoretical education, the function of which was to ‘discipline’ children rather than to impart learning for its own sake. Thus it is no surprise that modern school retards development rather than escalating it. By sequestering children away from the adult world…a rigid separation and distinction by ages…children were no longer able to learn from older and wiser children. (77) The ideology of school was the ideology of childhood. It operated on the assumption that children needed ‘discipline’…and that to facilitate this they should be corralled in a special place with their own kind, and with an age group as restricted to their own as possible. The school was the institution that structured childhood by effectively segregating childhood from the rest of society, thus retarding their growth into adulthood and their development of specialized skills for which society had use. As a result they remained economically dependent for longer and longer periods of time: thus family ties remained unbroken.

This insight is definitely true! Those of us who had older brothers or sisters we hung out with 0r were exposed to know that hanging out with older peers taught us vastly more about life than sitting in a 4th grade classroom. If we think back we also remember that most of us were desperate to know about life outside of our rigidly defined child allowance of knowledge. We wanted to know about sex, about work, about life. It definitely seems ridiculous to segregate children by age when you look at how quickly children learn from their older peers. That kind of inter-generational learning and contact is generally looked down on across the board, even for middle-aged adults. Senior citizens have a wealth of knowledge just because you learn a lot of shit when you’ve been alive long enough. We cut ourselves off from wisdom and knowledge when we are confined to people of our strict age group.

Shulamith also makes interesting observations about the ways that children and womyn are treated in society, as distinct creatures needing special treatment. In the below passage she gives a humorous overview of the ways in which both children and women are patronized by society in analogous ways that reveal the false generosity that underlies paternalism.

The myth of childhood has an even greater parallel in the myth of femininity. Both women and children were considered asexual and thus ‘purer’ than man. Their inferior status was ill concealed under an elaborate ‘respect’. One did not discuss serious matters nor did one curse in front of women and children. Both were set apart by fancy and nonfunctional clothing and were given special tasks (housework and homework respectively); both were considered mentally deficient (‘What can you expect from a woman?’ ‘He’s too little to understand’). The pedestal of adoration on which both were set made it hard for them to breathe. Every interaction with the adult world became for children a tap dance. They learned to use their childhood to get what they wanted indirectly (‘He’s throwing another tantrum!’), just as women learned to use their femininity (‘There she goes, crying again!’). Because the class oppression of women and children is couched in the phraseology of ‘cute’ it is much harder to fight than open oppression. What child can answer back when some inane aunt falls all over him or some stranger decides to pat his behind and gurgle baby talk? What woman can afford to frown when a passing stranger violates her privacy at will? Very often the real nature of these seemingly friendly remarks emerge when the child or the woman doesn’t smile as she should” ‘Dirty old scum bag. I wouldn’t screw you even if you had a smile on your puss!’… ‘Nasty little brat. If I were your father I would spank you so hard you wouldn’t know what hit you!’… Their violence is amazing. Yet these men feel that the woman or the child is to blame for not being friendly. Because it makes them uncomfortable to know that the woman/child/black/workman is grumbling, the oppressed groups must also appear to like their oppression – smiling and simpering though they may feel like hell inside. (83)

I quote the above passage at length because it is amusing to me and also true. I like Firestone’s colorful writing. In the chapter she goes on to look at the way children’s oppression is structured by their economic dependence and physical weakness. She also looks at the repression that is perpetrated against child sexuality. I think that Firestone makes really interesting points throughout this chapter, and raises a lot of questions that are still pretty relevant.

I would add to the above insight that the advent of schooling and childhood as a distinct period in life definitely maps onto the need to have more educated, skilled labor, and the needs of capital generally. But it is interesting to think about what childhood would look like under communism. How would we raise children? How would we respect their voices, their understanding of the world? How would we involve children in the decisions we make about the world they are going to inherit? It’s interesting to think about childhood and the role it has played in capitalism. Children and childhood are definitely good for promoting conspicuous consumption. Segmented markets are definitely a capitalist strategy that accentuates differences and cultural identity in order to sell commodities.

But what about intra-family violence and assumptions we have about children today? What would childhood look like if the upbringing of children was not tied to the development of wage-labor? These are questions I find myself thinking about today. Also, how can we incorporate a vision of society free of patriarchy, and not reproduce oppressive relations that exist today between adults and children? What would child liberation look like?

I encourage any thoughts or comments on this subject. I leave you with the conclusion of this chapter.

Children, then, are not freer than adults. They are burdened by a wish fantasy in direct proportion to the restraints of their narrow lives; with an unpleasant sense of their own physical inadequacy and ridiculousness; with constant shame about their dependence, economic and otherwise (‘Mother, may I?’) and humiliation concerning their natural ignorance of practical affairs. Children are repressed at every waking minute. Childhood is hell. The result is the insecure, and therefore aggressive/defensive, often-obnoxious little person we call a child. Economic, sexual and general psychological oppressions reveal themselves in coyness, dishonesty, spite, and these unpleasant characteristics in turn reinforcing the isolation of children from the rest of society. Thus their rearing, particularly in its most difficult personality phases, is gladly relinquished to women—who tend for the same reason, to exhibit these personality characteristics themselves. Except for the ego rewards involved in having children of one’s own, few men show any interest in children. And fewer still grant them their political importance. So it is up to feminist (ex-child and still oppressed women) revolutionaries to do so. We must include the oppression of children in any programme for feminist revolution or we will be subject to the same failing of which we have so often accused men: of not having gone deep enough in our analysis, of having missed an important substratum of oppression merely because it didn’t concern us. (94) (Emphasis added.)