I've been doing more internet reading than is probably good for me, and I'm feeling unsettled.
I've been seeing a lot of articles pop up lately about respect, gentle parenting, and consent. I like all these words. But I don't like what I'm reading. These philosophies rub me the wrong way.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, let me stop you. Scroll down to the bottom of this post. There you'll find a list of links to the articles I will be talking about. Check on or two or all of them out, if you like, so you get some context on what I'm responding to. (Or just blaze ahead and trust me that there's some... interesting... philosophy going on here.)
The basic idea behind most of these articles, as far as I can think, is that your child is an individual with rights and dignity and should be treated as such. And to that very reasonable statement, I reply... well, yes, but also... no?
A child is a human being, yes. An individual? Somewhat. Anyone who has engaged in the choice/life debate knows, though, that there are degrees of individuality. Degrees of "rights." I made this little person. She is formed from my material. We shared blood, less than a year ago. It will be a long time before she has autonomy, and in my opinion, that's the way it should be.
I don't respect my daughter. She's a tiny ball of movement and bad judgement who is constantly trying to kill herself, and I suspect she will remain that way into college
I'm only half joking.
When people talk about respecting their kids, teaching them that they are the masters of their own tiny world, that NO ONE (not even the parent) can lay a finger on them, take a toy away from them, or even change their diaper without their consent, I get seven kinds of squirrely. I'm not the kind of person who believes in "laying down the law" or "spare the rod, spoil the child." In 99% of real-world situations, I'm laid back in the discipline department.
But.
But "respecting" your child is weird.
Respect has to be earned, by proving you're reliable, trustworthy, and competent. Kids are specifically, exactly, geometrically, the OPPOSITE of that. They're little people who don't know how to human yet, and we need to teach them. This means cutting them a LOT of slack ( like remembering that they're not throwing a tantrum in the middle of Target to humiliate you, but just because their feelings are so big and they are so small), and it also means remembering that they don't know what the heck is going on yet. If you ask your child whether you may change their diaper, and they decide, "Hmm, no, I'd rather keep playing instead," is that a rational decision, the same way you deciding between cereal and eggs for breakfast is? NO, it's the insane non-reason of a child whose brain doesn't work yet, as evidenced by the fact that they would rather steep in their own poop than give up one single solitary moment of bashing the T-Rex into the Triceratops. That's why kids have parents, so that somebody will take care of them while they're not capable of doing it themselves.
We can't be looking to our kids to make their own decisions, because that's asking them to make our decisions. As adults, with developed judgement, it's up to us to decide what's best for our children. And now I don't mean that in a "Johnny can't go to Art School, I want him to be an investment banker," way. I mean that in a "No, you can't eat a box of chocolate graham crackers while playing outside, naked, in 40-degree-rain," way. We can't step back and be supportive buddies while our kids take the reigns. It's permissive parenting, masquerading as "gentle."
Besides being a bad use of adult reasoning, respect is standoffish. It's formal. Nina, the author of the article about how to know whether you respect your child,
says to ask yourself, "Would I talk to someone else this way?" Well, no, Nina, I wouldn't talk
to someone else this way, because "someone else" isn't my kid. Imagine if you related to your husband like that, never saying or doing anything to him that you wouldn't say or do to any stranger on the street. Would that be "respectful," or kinda cold and weird? We treat different people in our lives differently. That's appropriate. If I talk to my electrician the same way I talk to my mom, one of those conversations is going to be super weird. So if "respect" to you means treating a child, or a baby, the same way you would treat an adult, I "respectfully" think you're freaking bonkers.
This philosophy says, "You are an individual, I am an individual, and I'm not going to interfere with your right to assert your will." No. Forget that. I can't do that. My daughter is made from me. When I met her, she felt like a stranger. But that was insanity. That was broken. She's not a stranger, she's a part of me. I'm not letting go of that connectedness. She cries when I cry. Sometimes I cry when she cries. And I'm going to do my very best to lock that down and be the adult, because I am the adult, and her feelings will not rule me, but dammit, we affect one another. we are not two separate individual souls with a right to our own way. We are family. We are bound by love. That means we get to yell at each other and cry together and argue passionately and cuddle for hours and play and eat and fight. And no, I won't treat her the way I treat anyone else. And no, I won't respect her, until she's earned my respect. Even then, that won't be the primary way I relate to her. I'm not going to get her to weigh in on my personal decisions, and I'm not going to sign emails to her "Warmest Regards." Because that's weird. That's what you say to a business acquaintance or somebody you're secretly annoyed at.
I'm not going to sit stone faced next to her tantrumming body and calmly ask her if she's ready to use her words. I'm going to haul her little butt to the car where she can feel her feelings in safety and peace, knowing she's not CAPABLE of making a choice in that situation. I'm not going to ask for her consent before changing her diaper, because she does not have an adult sense of self and THAT'S NONSENSE ANYWAY, SHE'S NOT AN ADULT, SHE JUST NEEDS HER BUTT WIPED. She's not a stranger in the street, you wackadoo!
Ahem. Sorry. I'm all riled up from trying to logic my way through my annoyance at these articles.
Which brings me to the "genderless child" topic. The argument there seems to be that it's unfair to
assume the child's gender matches their biological sex, and that we don't know the kid's
gender until they express that. Which, ok, maybe that's partially true! There are certainly
kids whose gender doesn't match their sex, and it would be messed up not to acknowledge that when it happens. But the thing is, most of the time, your kid's gender will match their sex. And as far as I've seen, read, or heard from people I know, transgender kids don't resent their parents for taking the shortcut of using the pronouns that matched their sex until asked to do otherwise. What's damaging for kids is when they are able to articulate their identity, and they aren't listened to. We've got to be pragmatists about this. Unless our whole society is willing to undergo a massive linguistic shift (spoiler alert: it isn't), pronouns are here to stay. You aren't a cisnormative douchebag if you use the convenient pronouns until you have reason to do otherwise. Parenting is exhausting, without having to walk on eggshells around every sentence because you might trample your child's individuality. Children are tough lil bastards whose individuality cannot be quashed even if you wanted to, most of the time. Trust me, they'll express themselves when they want to.
You're the adult. It's your job to use your best judgement, and your love for your kid, to decide what's best, until it's clear that your kid needs something else, then change gears. It's totally unfair to put the onus of deciding their gender and sexuality on the head of a baby. Your kid does not have a working brain right now. They have a rapidly growing meatlump that is trying SO HARD to learn how to speak, how to move, what the basic rules of the universe are. So, yeah, don't push your kid to be particularly gender-normative, but can we just be practical and use the apparent pronouns?
All of this also ties into the topic of consent, as well. Asking a kid's permission to change their diaper, using exclusively the correct medical terminology for your kid's parts, insisting on their right to never hug a smelly aunt or hold a crossing guard's hand, all of it. I understand, you want to teach your child that they have the right to decide what happens to their body. That's a beautiful and noble ideal. It's also total pigpoop. Who among us can actually say we have total control or autonomy over our bodies? (Cricket, cricket). I don't like half the stuff that happens to my body. I don't like having to stand all day at a job, or politely shake the sweaty hands of new acquaintances, or the loss of basic control I have now when I laugh hard enough. As a matter of fact, you know what involved a whole lot of lack of autonomy over what was happening to my body? Pregnancy and childbirth, kiddo. So yes, it is every child's right to be protected, to be shielded from spanking and perverts. But it's completely unfeasible, in my mind, to teach a kid that they have the right to determine everything that happens to their body. If Poopy wants her body to be crawling up the stairs to the apartment and I want her body to be safely enclosed behind a gate in her play area, I win that argument hands down. I would rather teach my child that she can trust me to take care of her needs, than that she has control over everything that happens to her.
"But Weenie!" The imaginary ultra-progressive parent in my head protests. "What about parents who children can't trust? Are you saying abusers are never parents? What kind of a thing is that to teach children?"
Well, that's some straight nonsense, there, imaginary person. Do you think the kind of parents who are going to abuse their kids are reading parenting blogs? That's completely backwards thinking. I can teach my child to trust her parents, because I am her parent, and I know myself. I am FAR from perfect, but I'm never going to abuse my power over my daughter. Why would I raise her as if that was a possibility, like she might need this sense of autonomy to fight me off if it became necessary?
Something I noticed was that some of the moms writing about this stuff have ONE kid. It's one thing to ask your one child for his permission every time you touch him (super weird, but theoretically feasible.) I'd love to see that mom get each kid's full consent while trying to wrangle 5 children out to door in time for school. At the end of the day, it's not doable, and I kinda think you're an idiot.
(On the other hand, I see that woman got some really hateful messages and threats and like... what is wrong with people?? Good grief, leave her alone! Isn't her own weirdness punishment enough?)
Now strangers randomly touching my kid is a completely different thing. Strangers absolutely need to ask permission before touching someone's kid, so that we can side-eye them while replying "No" emphatically, giving the children time to move out of arm's reach. Yet this also kind of proves my point. I was super shy as a kid and I didn't enjoy talking to strangers, but my sister was different. She loved everybody. She would run up to strangers and beam at them, even give them hugs or ask to be picked up when she was little. Now by the rules of bodily autonomy, it's her body and she should be allowed to do that. But no way in ANY universe am I letting my daughter go hug random strangers, even if she wants to! That would be insane. She doesn't truly have bodily autonomy, because she doesn't KNOW ANYTHING YET. I'm the boss of her body, for now. I'm the steward of her body, charged with keeping it safe and whole and fed and cleanish until she's old enough to start taking over. That's just common sense, in my eyes.
Teaching my kids only the medical terminology for all their dingles and bits is another aspect of weirdness in this whole philosophy, but I don't know if I really have any logical high ground on that one. It just feels really awkward and weird to me. (Oh, good reasoning there, Weenie. You definitely sound more logical than a middle schooler.) I think if I try to force myself to talk about my daughter's labia majora, she's going to pick up on how weird I feel about that. She might even internalize my discomfort as something wrong with her or her parts, and that would break my heart. I don't see what benefit there is in referring to poopies only as "feces," or to tinkling as "urination," or any of that. I'm not a scientist and this is not Biology class. She's tiny, and I have to wipe her butt many times every day. If calling her stinky diapers "poo-poo-pourri" makes me feel less like vomiting, I'm gonna go ahead and let myself off the hook for that one.
That's really the best philosophy, in my book, anyway - the best way to parent your kid is the way that feels best to you. If you were traumatized or abused as a child and it makes you feel positive and empowered to ask your baby's permission before touching him, then you do that. If there's someone in your family you feel weird around and specifically don't want your child to hug that person without singling them out, yeah, totally phase out hugs and suggest high-fives instead for the whole family. And if the idea of ever looking your future son in the eye and referring to his "penile tissue" makes you want to peel all your fingernails off, maybe go ahead and call it a winky.
This is the problem with reading the internet. You get all these perspectives coming from who-knows-what basis, and it might be exactly the wrong advice for you. Maybe there's an audience that really needs to hear these parenting philosophies, a brand of parent who views their children as straight-up property, or charming accessories (when they're quiet). Maybe if you approached parenthood from a "My word is LAW" place, moving in this direction would be helpful. But I have a feeling those also aren't the parents who read these things. I have a feeling the people who read these articles are largely people like me-- unsure, pretending to have it together, desperately worried they're messing everything up. I just want those people to know, you're doing ok. The fact that you have picked your kid up or wiped poop off of their gender-ambiguous genitals without asking permission will not teach them to be hetero-normative rapists or helpless victims. Even that time you smooched your toddler so much they got annoyed and wriggled away-- that's ok, too. You're not setting them up to be molested. As long as you love them, as long as you listen, as long as you keep doing your best, it's all going to be ok.
Warmest regards,
Weenie
Article on how to know if you respect your kids
Article about Mom who asks her infant son's permission before picking him up
Respectful diaper changes
Article about consent
Article about "gentle parenting"
Raising a genderless child
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