Is Parenting an Abuse of Power?

is the elephant in the womb really the government in the tomb?

I was invited to a forum on Parentarchy, showing that 'the Elephant in the Womb is the Government in the Tomb' and parents have no right to control their children. I argue that the ONLY good use of power is to give someone power over themselves, which is the job of parents. I tell stories of Machiavellian midgets, angelic grand viziers and islands of misfit toys.

Everything Voluntary Jack, about whom I did another episode called The Dogma of Atheism, invited me to a forum. He wrote:

Hi Tereza, as a person, woman and mother, I hope you will join our Free Friends Forum on "PARENTARCHY"--check my new post with that title… Mothers especially welcomed.

His Parentarchy post was subtitled, “PARENTAL POWER: The Elephant in the Womb is the Government in the Tomb. STATISM STARTS AT HOME: Worldwide the Authoritarian "Right" to Own and Control Children is What Legitimizes the Authoritarian "Right" for Governments to Treat its Populations as Children/Slaves/Pets.”

I think we can only aspire to be treated as pets. Mark Alexander posted this sign from Mexico and its charming typo, which Jack would take as evidence we should NOT be controlling our pets:

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staying the curse

I commented on his post:

Hi, Jack. I have some questions for your forum. Who should have authority over the person who takes primary responsibility for a child? My rule of thumb is that authority and responsibility should always go together. But this seems to imply that there's a body of authority that should be over parents, that would take no direct responsibility for the children, but would set the rules for how parents needed to parent. And what would be the punishment to parents who don't obey this authority? Would their children be taken from them? Given to strangers who are paid by you as a taxpayer? Would you send them to parent reform school before they could get them back?

As a related aside, my reader Guy tells me that the term 'rule of thumb' derived from the law that said a man couldn't beat his wife with any lash more narrow than his thumb. That answers the question, I think, of who has been given authority over the person taking primary responsibility for a child. And if the child is an oldest son, he has authority over the mother in primogeniture. Women were allowed to wear veils to show they were 'owned' by a father, brother or husband. Women without a veil could be raped at will, and wearing a veil without a male 'owner' made a woman subject to being stoned to death.

I grew up in the era of spanking and corporal punishment, which was inflicted by fathers in the home and nuns in the school. The trope was "Wait until your father gets home." So 'parentarchy' is really an oxymoron. -archy comes from archons or rulers, who could only be male. The pater familia had complete power over wives, children, servants and slaves.

In looking up which gender commits more child abuse, I first found the counterintuitive stat that it was women. And then I found this site that looks at that statistic: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/statistics.html. It states: "90% of all children who are in the care of one caregiver are in the actual physical care of a woman (parent, grandparent, teacher, babysitter, day care provider, nurse, etc.), and that 10% are in the care of a man. (This is a conservative estimate.)" It then adjusts the statistics based on that and eliminating instances in the care of a couple, in which the woman would be charged with 'failure to protect.' The result is that a child in the care of a man is astronomically more likely to be the victim of abuse that in the care of a woman, when looking at active violence rather than minor instances of neglect where no actual harm occurred.

If your objective is to reduce the amount of physical pain inflicted on children, the best thing you can do is enable mothers to securely care for their children without the need to depend on a man or, even more importantly, be forced to share custody without being present. Children belong to and with their mothers. Forcibly taking them away, through adoption, custody or mandatory employment inflicts the lifelong trauma of abandonment on an infant. If the child's well-being is your concern, protect the bond with the mother.

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emancipating toddlers

In his reply, Jack stated:

“Parentarchy” is a very much needed new word to make VISIBLE the destruction, systemic, taken-for-granted, power of parents over their offspring so that society at large will condemn such abuse of power as immoral and the main cause of human violence in the world …

“Parentarchy’ like Feminist “Patriarchy” is meant to make morally visible to society what is, unfortunately, still far too ubiquitously invisible: the largely unconscious self-justification of parents granting themselves the moral right to treat their children as slaves and pets—e.g., to be morally justified to use first physical force upon their children as punishment—which is under the Voluntaryist NAP, immoral and criminal.

I tried to imagine who was going to take responsibility for these newly emancipated toddlers, who should be respected as equals when they say ‘no’. Yet Jack kept going back to spanking, as if any use of power was the same as violence. I wrote:

You know, right, that we agree that every child is born with bodily sovereignty and to not have violations of the body is the most fundamental human right?

I don't think this is controversial in terms of corporal punishment in the US. Any parent who smacks their kid in public will be put on social media and vilified. Public opinion is overwhelmingly against spanking in the US. It's not, however, criminalized as you are saying it should be, putting the State between the parent and the child.

I believe the only legitimate role of the State is to protect the sovereignty of communities. The only legitimate role of community governance is to protect the sovereignty of families. And the legitimate role of the father is to protect the mother so she can protect the children. That's my definition of tonic masculinity.

If the State is 'entrusted' with protecting the child from the mother, you've given up all sovereignty in favor of an 'authority' who you say cares more about the child than the mother.

And -archy isn't just rule, it comes from the all-male body of rulers with a precise inheritance order. 'Matriarchy' is a reactionary word to patriarchy, which has been the law in Western civilization up until my generation. Mine is the first in which women are not fully dependent on a man in order to raise children. Instead, they've been forced to serve investor profits, just like men, and raise their children in their spare time. I don't see that as progress, and don't consider myself a feminist.

I did attend what was billed as a forum, which was three men, one of whom didn’t have kids, and myself. It turned out to be a lecture in which Jack went through his sales pitch for Positive Parenting, which he teaches. The participants were asked leading questions like, “Do you agree with Thomas Szasz that the lower a person’s self-esteem, the greater will be their desire and ability to control others?”

For those who study techniques of manipulation, this will be familiar. The implication, of course, is that only a parent with low self-esteem would try to control their kids. I asked Jack to define the question we were discussing, but he wanted me to answer this instead. I asked him to define Parentarchy, and he said ‘Here’s an example …’ but I said no, I was asking for a definition. Later, when I tried to give an example of my point, Jack retorted, ‘We’re not using anecdotal evidence.’

It went downhill from there.

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i am the elephant in the womb

Today Jack sent me a note:

Hi Tereza

I am sorry you were offended by the polite challenge Leonard posed for you.

I transcribed the conversation below. I hope you will consider a 4th way to interact with children: reason and negotiation rather than only your 3 behavioral focused punishments and rewards ways.

Parent Effectiveness Training can show you tested, successful 4th ways to raise more responsibly free younger ones without the use of bribes, threats or manipulation.

I especially hope you will read Alfie Kohn on rewards as punishments. And I hope you will abandon the State as an immoral means to achieve any end as it transgresses the NAP.

TEREZA "the goal in the end is for them to do the thing that I want them to do because I care about them.” [in this quote, Jack drops the first part of my sentence, as seen later]

As the sentence from the transcription shows, you are authoritarian defined as you just want to be obeyed and believe that domination is moral for humans as parents so long as it serves what you consider a good end. This is the immoral justification used by all who want to control others rather than themselves. This is the usual "I am "bribing, threatening, manifpulating, beating, etc." you for "your own good" or "this hurts me more than you"....

For me, you are an example of the "Elephant in the Womb". You cannot see "Parentarchy" because you are it. Like the two young fish swimming in the water passed by the older fish who asks "how's the water today?", the younger fish ask each other "what's water". You cannot see you are using Parent Power which is the source of our troubled world because you consider it morally justified and the only way to deal with younger persons just as at one time historically almost all believed Slavery was moral.

We can do a Free Friends Forum on Parenting with you presenting your 3 and I and others presenting our 1 reason/negotiation.

With interest and care, Jack

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leading the elephant to water

Here is the transcript of the ‘polite challenge’ that Jack included:

TEREZA 53:05 “So the three tools, once you eliminate physical violence on which we are all in agreement ... what you are left with as a parent is bribes, threats and manipulation.

LEONARD 53:25 “I would just add one more option that you might be, have available, and that is reason. What you talked about, the problems that parents face, it’s all real, right? But, but, think about how you interact with a friend, an adult friend, is it possible to act in the same way to a child, with the same level of respect?

TEREZA “I can give you examples of other parents whose kids …

LEONARD interrupts: “I am not saying that, it’s an option because you were very adamant that there were only three, that might be true for some people, they only see three options.”

JACK “Most people can only see three.”

LEONARD “I would just offer that, maybe there are other options that you may just not have come across yet.”

TEREZA “So using reason to say, here’s why you shouldn’t run carrying your baby sister over a cement floor: you could drop her, she could crack her head, she could die … I found that reason actually is too much for kids … If I would say, it’s going to cost you a point [an example of Tereza’s parenting system], my kids would just stop.”

LEONARD: “How about this, I give you an alternative scenario. If he runs across the concrete floor with a baby she might die. What about if you redirected his energy and helped him learn how to hold a baby, how to control a baby, not run across a concrete floor that’s dangerous, but instead of denying the child because it’s dangerous and you have to, but you can still work with the intention, what was he trying to do? Have you ever asked that question? You don’t know the motivation. It could have been a bad motivation or a good motivation, you don’t know. But how about redirecting his energy. Hey, you’re trying to lift your baby sister, you’re so strong. How about I can teach you a better way? Now this situation, is it a potential possibility depending on the child, their age and maturity? It’s just a question.”

TEREZA “This discussion is not respectful to me. Because what you’re telling me is how to parent…”

LEONARD “I’m not telling you anything I’m asking questions…”

TEREZA “I am a mother who has raised three daughters who are all successful, happy and who are people who are great additions to the world and who are taking responsibility for themselves. And so for you to tell me how I should have parented … I need to go, I really need to go.”

JACK “Can I say something just before you go?”

TEREZA “Yeah.”

JACK “I think Leonard’s trying to get to, is what Alfie Kohn and Thomas Gordon try to get to for parents like you: there is a fourth alternative besides using threats, bribes and manipulation. These are, to Voluntaryists, forms of punishment and rewards that we shouldn’t be using with our children. And there is a fourth way that Leonard was suggesting, using negotiation, using reason, giving self-determination to our young ones, shaping the environment so it will be safe and they can learn about concrete dropping and everything else. We’d like you to consider there is a fourth way, would you consider that?

TEREZA “I will discuss it with my daughters and ask them whether they think that me using negotiation and reason would have been seen by them as a more sophisticated form of manipulation because the goal in the end is for them to do the thing that I want them to do because I care about them.”

JACK “Yes, and that’s what is completely…I think wrong with parenting your style is that you just want them to obey you and that’s the kind of parenting we don’t want in the world.”

TEREZA “I want them to obey so that they are not harming themselves or thwarting themselves into less than they are born to be.

JACK “Right, and that’s what the government says to all of their child, slaves, citizens … I am just protecting you by putting you into jail … HERE TEREZA LEAVES ZOOM. Ok, we’ve lost her. Leonard you’re right on.”

LEONARD “It comes back to my original point … there’s a definite divide in the world and it comes down, as I see it, to Authoritarian and Non-Authoritarian freedom.

JACK “And Voluntaryism. Either you want to be Self-Authorized or you need to allow someone else who’s superior to you to tell you what to do and she [TEREZA] is an example of this.

LEONARD “It’s sort of in their DNA in a way, that’s not to say your locked in, religiosity…”

JACK “I make that point: the family, clan, collective structure evolutionarily speaking is Authoritarian to its core. You’ve got to be able to step out of it using reason and it’s difficult for people.”

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the elephant brays back

I am more amused than offended by Jack and Leonard. If I add the ages of my daughters, I have 88 years of combined experience in parenting, because what worked for one didn’t necessarily work for another. And as any parent knows, the work is never done but there comes a time when the results are in.

There’s no one in the world I’d rather spend time with than my daughters. Unfortunately for me, many others feel the same way. Holidays are a delight because everyone cooks, everyone cleans, and everyone analyzes whoever isn’t in the room. They all know how to take care of a house, maintain a car and keep a job. They know how to keep a healthy body, feed an active mind. They know how to nurture friendships and set boundaries. They take responsibility for their own happiness and have fair and loving relationships. They’re funny and like each other. And me.

Jack and Leonard state that my parenting was wrong and they would have done a better job. Based on nothing, they conclude I was a failure as a mother. From their position as authorities on parenting, they have nothing to learn from my experience. I must see the error of my authoritarian ways and bow to their superior wisdom. They wag heads with each other, over how difficult that must be for people like me.

While preaching that children should be spoken to as adults, they speak down to adults as particularly gullible children. Using techniques to get acquiescence, they end their admonitions with ‘is it possible?’ ‘It’s just a question', and ‘would you consider that?’ For my daughters, the answer would have been ‘no.’ Checkmate. They would have run circles around this clumsy NLP attempt at manipulation. In an alternate universe, I would have loved to see it.

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the point system

What Jack calls ‘reason and negotiation’ is emotional manipulation because what happens when the child behaves badly in public? The parent is embarrassed, ashamed, disappointed—none of which they can admit, even to themselves. When you let kids treat you in a way you would never treat them, the child also experiences shame. And building up their ‘self-esteem’ only makes it worse.

Manipulation, when you can get a kid to do what you want and think it was their idea, is far and away the best. But I couldn’t think that fast. It took everything I had to stay one step ahead of my three Machiavellian midgets, who had nothing better to do with those prodigious brains than figure out how to get what they wanted without giving me what I wanted. So I gave up on that and made my manipulation as transparent as possible.

I just looked at the etymology of transparent and found “presenting no obstacle to the passage of light.” That’s the objective of a parent. All good comes from within the child, but a parent’s job is to help them get out of their own way.

Under my system, the bribe was always the same—around 15 minutes of something they did for me: piano, saxophone, violin, workbook pages. When they got older, podcasts I wanted them to hear. This bought them one point at a variable exchange rate—$1 for cash, candy, or toys up to $1O for fair trade clothes, books, or donations to charity. It couldn’t be earned by doing chores or schoolwork, which were their responsibility, not something they did for me.

The threat was always the same—that I would need to take away a point, for instance, if they didn’t come the third time I asked on the playground. After the first few months, this almost never happened. The threat was enough. It cost them something they’d earned, which hurt, but was also replaceable. It gave them agency and control over how they got what they wanted, without wheedling or nagging.

There are many things I look back on as a parent with doubt and regret, but the point system isn’t one. All my daughters say that they’ll use it when they have kids. It keeps things fair and makes transactions clean, at the level of behavior. It leaves your love and emotion to be given without cost, as they should be.

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barbie cars & grand viziers

I’ll end with two stories of parents who used or taught a parenting program like Jack’s.

My best friend had a son at the same time as I had my middle daughter. When they got a little older, he started biting and hitting my girls. At one point, I gave him a time-out, which was fine with him until I took away the barbie car. At that point, his mom decided I was abusing him.

Her technique, learned from these programs, was to say, “Look at how much you’ve hurt her. See how much pain she’s in? Is there anything you want to say?” After a mumbled apology, they’d leave, taking the mom out of a social occasion she was enjoying, making him the center of attention, demonstrating how much power he had to inflict pain, and giving him what he wanted.

I don’t know if my system would have changed his trajectory. My attempts to get her to try it failed, and we stopped being friends. I only know Jack’s system didn’t and the real world consequences only multiplied.

In a second story, a parent who taught Jack’s method in the schools had a daughter in Veronica’s year. We called her the grand vizier because she was always scheming. She excluded Veronica from the group and would ridicule her over her weight. In seventh grade, Veronica would come home crying and I’d be reading Queen Bees & Wannabes like my life depended on it.

One time at the beach, she got Veronica to say something mean about her friend, who was native American and bigger. The friend overheard and was hurt. It became a turning point in Veronica’s life where she decided she didn’t want to be a queen bee or wannabe, she wanted to be with people who were kind. And so she started what I called the island of misfit toys, gathering the strays and making them into a tribe.

The grand vizier, however, was beloved by adults. She knew exactly how to play the game and come across as an angel, a peacemaker, a negotiator, a champion of the excluded. She learned exactly what she was taught—how to dominate and manipulate with passive-aggressive tricks, exactly as Jack and Leonard tried to use on me. What you teach, they will learn—reciprocity or duplicity.

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For my daughter's 32nd birthday, I talk about the dispersal of friends out of California for houses, replacing those who left their hometowns to find jobs. I feminize my historical and Biblical analysis by telling the stories, including In Memory of My Best Friend Jumana by Ghaydaa Owaidah. From my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, I explain why we are all precariots, as the Greeks termed themselves under IMF austerity. And how community is being killed by a thousand contactless cuts.

Be the Meanest Mom Ever, Your Kids Will Thank You … Eventually

Before anyone is qualified to write rules for self-governance, they should first raise kids who are an asset to the household and know how to clean a toilet. The only legitimate use of power is to give someone power over themselves. In this response to Russell's interview of Philippa Perry (UtS 170) on Self-Awareness & Parenting, I advise "Be the meanest mom ever, your kids will thank you ... eventually." I ask if modeling works and whether parenting is harder than it should be, and then divulge the best tricks I learned from other moms when raising my daughters.

I describe the crisis in parenting that led me to develop something I called the point system when my daughters were young. I compare this to the system of community carets in my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. Both encourage 'adulting' and taking responsibility for homes, businesses and each other.