On “parents’ rights”
Originally posted on Tumblr
I’ve realized that a LOT of very reasonable, not fascist people around me are kinda into the “parental rights” gibberish fundies are peddling these days……….on the surface.
By far the most compelling way I’ve challenged this thinking? Simply saying, “I’m just really concerned for all the kids who have abusive parents like mine…” and I share like 1 careful anecdote about what my childhood was like. I get a lot of “WOW 🤯 yeah, I really hadn’t thought about that…” back. I’ve (not exaggerating) had 7 convos of the past month or so like this and most have thanked me for saying it.
People have all kinds of cognitive biases that affect their perception. To people who think of parents as “inherently good” due to their first hand experiences and/or biases, you quite literally have to point this stuff out to them.
Children’s rights are constantly overlooked, dismissed, and ignored. A lot of people want to “have babies” but don’t think of it as producing autonomous humans who deserve to be seen that way and not property of their parents. I’ll keep looking for more and more ways to underscore that fact.
Like…many normal* kind parents want to very genuinely “protect” their kids. I think that energy is misguided in some ways but I understand it. They are afraid of a world that can do real harm and they think of parent’s rights as something that could help them achieve that goal. If you’re not really someone who has time or interest in keeping up on this kind of thing, you don’t know the true intentions behind them.
Policymakers who are talking about “parents rights” are actually proposing policies that will work against that goal—policies that will harm and kill many MANY kids (those who have abusive parents AND those who don’t.)
I’m finding that people WANT this info when I put it into the mix…it’s compelling and important to note. And you can do that too, even if you don’t have firsthand experience with child abuse. In fact, it’s an act of community service any time parenting policy comes up to all stop and ask, “how would a kid in an unsafe home be affected by this?”