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Actually, you know what? No. I'm gonna keep talking. Sorry that folks found the discussion of the potentially-tyrannical powers of parents disturbing. But...my account, my voice. I'm gonna use it. And I can't use my voice if I can't talk about what I've experienced.
The fact of the matter is, the tweet I retweeted that sparked all this...resonated with a lot of people. Was it phrased aggressively, incendiarily? Sure. Was it harmful? Eeeeh. Doubt it. Might it hurt to think of your parents as potential tyrants? Sure!
But I find it hard to argue with the idea--both out of my own experience and my own observations--that all parents POSSESS tyrant-level power over their children.
Part of the point I was trying to make earlier is that, by a lot of standards, my parents were reasonably good parents! They fed me, housed me, never beat me, tried to teach me things, provided me an adequate education.
And yet, I would still call my upbringing traumatic! Because there's more to it than the bare minimum. And NOTHING that they did that caused that damage was in ANY way illegal. You know how I know? Because they made sure of it.
Dad READ the laws about homeschooling, child care, what you had to provide and how you had to be able to prove it if necessary. It was often a thing that my parents took great care about and were very concerned about--making sure they could prove they were hitting the minimums.
But I could give you a LONG list of things that they did, which left lasting impressions and scars, that were perfectly legal. Dad refusing to allow Mom to seek Medicaid or SNAP when he was unemployed because he didn't "want handouts"? Legal.
Means that I frequently went without regular checkups, dental care, etc., and what we did get was disproportionately expensive. I still struggle with the idea of seeing doctors on time! But Dad had his pride, and there weren't no rule, so sucked to be us!
My parents (Mom more than Dad, in retrospect) absolutely ensured that I got enough to eat--though I suspect that sometimes Mom didn't have enough to eat. Did Dad also openly resent the amount he had to spend on me, the way I ate and ate and didn't make a cent for the family? YUP.
Did he make repeated attempts to force me to work on his long-shot "businesses," and remind me that, hey, if it's a family business, there weren't no rule saying he couldn't make me help out...eight hours a day, if need be? Sure did.
You want tyrant? Parents have ABSOLUTE control over who their children associate with. Do you know how many friends I started to make, only to have to let them go, because Dad had hacked off their parents and "didn't want to associate with those people" anymore?
Mom tried, but a "playdate" every month or so, and weekly homeschool-group-sponsored "gym classes" don't really generate a lot of social contact, you know? With no money, no school, and a father openly contemptuous of most of the people he associated with...well.
Didn't matter what I wanted. They controlled the money and the transportation. How many times did Dad threaten to stop paying for my martial arts classes (another rare place to actually see people) because I wasn't taking them "seriously" enough?
Beyond all that, parents have a terrifying amount of control over their child's cultural and social context. Put lightly, my father spent about a decade and a half indoctrinating me into his all-encompassing, Evangel-atheist philosophy. And there is NOTHING I could have done.
(And this isn't just my dad! This is every kid whose parents are some kind of fanatic, be it religious or otherwise. Good luck if your parents are Sc**ntologists!)
Anyone who could have provided a different perspective was locked out. No school, so nobody could teach me differently in class. No sports or extracurriculars, for the most part, so I could never have an authority figure who would contradict him.
No friends, no friends of the family, no relatives, almost nothing but Dad, Mom, and myself for nearly two decades. No outside network AT ALL to provide any context for what was being shoved in my brain. Just enough to cover the baselines.
And as far as discipline and punishment went? Shit, I was getting off LIGHT, as far as most people I knew were concerned, because I never got spanked, never got a "whupping."
(Can I point out, for a second, how disturbing it is that "oh, yeah, my mom just laid into me, was kinda funny!" is a story I heard over and over from my friends? Anecdotes about how kids were made to select their own 'switches' or paddles?)
My parents never laid a hand on me. But, TBH, I'd have preferred a paddling to a 'short leash'. See, one time I REALLY screwed up--was hanging out with some cousins and engaged in some mild property destruction, throwing scrap bricks at the ground to make them break.
In retrospect, nothing super awful, though certainly something mildly dangerous and disrespectful of other's property. I was eight or nine, and hanging out with older cousins, and high on getting to hang with the big boys for a while.
Dad decided that if he couldn't trust me to act right when I was out of his sight...I wouldn't get out of his sight. And I wouldn't get to act in any way he didn't control. So, the "short leash" started.
For two days, I was not allowed to do ANYTHING without permission. I got up when I was told to, sat where I was put. I couldn't read, play with toys, or even lie down and nap without explicit permission. I had to ask for EVERYTHING, even going to the bathroom.
At the end of it, to be released, I had to promise that I would NEVER again, ever, in any circumstance, act in any way that he would not want. To always, ALWAYS think first of 'what would dad say,' even if I was with another adult.
If I didn't? Then it would continue. If I broke the promise? It would start again. For as long as it took to ensure that Dad knew, without question, that I would never disobey him out of his sight ever again.
And that punishment? Legal, AFAIK. No beatings. No corporal punishment. No pain, no hunger. I got fed. I was allowed to sleep at night. But if I tell you that the idea of the 'short leash' still terrifies me, you might understand why.
And through all of it? Nobody knew. Worse, nothing looked like anything was wrong. My parents didn't spank me, barely raised their voices to me. I was quiet, respectful, I entertained myself, I didn't do most of the antics or selfish stupidity that most kids go through.
I wasn't An Abused Kid. And if people looked...sideways at my dad's diatribes, if they felt pity for the poor kid and his mom struggling to make ends meet with a husband/father who was out of work more than not...well, being poor sure as hell isn't illegal in America.
And it wasn't just me. Waaaay better adjusted former-kids than I am have stories about this kind of shit. Once you start looking for them? Recognizing them for what they are? They're EVERYWHERE.
Those parents that do shit like shaving their kids heads for giving themselves a haircut, or dying their hair? Well, the fact that I still see people laughing at those, see comments of 'oh, yeah, they'll know better next time' tells me how acceptable that's seen as.
Now, to be fair, there's a degree to which some of this may be unavoidable evils of parenting. A three year old may not want a shot, and might fight you no matter how much you explain or try to desensitize them. Do they have to get the shot? ...probably, yeah.
There's a degree to which "benevolent tyrant" might be the best we can hope for as far as parenthood--a benevolent tyrantcy that is slowly, willingly ceded as a child develops into an adult.
But...the fact of the matter is that if you have bad-but-not-that-kind-of-bad parents? Kids don't really have RIGHTS, man. They exist in this weird space of being people but not, proto-humans who admittedly aren't CAPABLE of adult judgment...
...but they're also not entitled to the full range of protections, either. We expect them to be preparing to be full adults, but we expect them to bear repeated violations of their volition and personhood without complaint. And that's in situations that AREN'T worst-case.
Part of my struggle is because...in many ways, my parents DID clear the bar! We were poor, but they ensured I always had food. When I ABSOLUTELY needed medical care, it happened. I was fed, kept housed, clothed, free from physical punishment.
I sure as hell got a better education than the kids I knew who were taught on 'biblical' education plans. (Which was also completely legal!) I even got braces! And...yet.
Yet, it was still damaging. Yet, it was still inadequate. Yet, it was still, IMO, neglect and abuse. What's a kid supposed to do about the indoctrination I was subjected to? That a queer kid might be subjected to?
And, TBH, so much of what I hear from other people seems to have a tinge of "oh, man, you could have had it SO MUCH WORSE, ha ha!" I think a lot of us have it in the back of our heads that what we endured...COULD have been worse, that if it HAD been worse...
...there would have been no recourse, no escape. And rather than dwell on that, we emphasize the good. Which is a perfectly understandable coping tactic...and probably explains why so many people reacted SO strongly to that tweet by Berlatsky.
If your parents only KIND of violated your personhood, if you managed to take a good lesson from it and not a traumatic one, it's probably SUPER uncomfortable to think of your beloved parent as a potential tyrant/oppressor/abuser! If you acknowledge those mistakes...
...then it's gonna be way harder to be just completely in sync with your parents. If you were/are a mostly-good parent, it's probably super uncomfortable to think that you might have acted that way, even with the best of intentions.
...but don't be surprised when people who HAVE experienced the dark side of how helpless kids can be against their parents resonate strongly with someone saying "parents are tyrants." We HAVE gotten so much better, we are starting to recognize what kids truly need from parents.
But if we can't have this discussion--if we can't hear the cry underlying statements like "parents are tyrants"...well, it ain't gonna get better.
Because there IS a cry underlying that statement. It's the pain of people who've had to endure their supposed caretakers being the inescapable source of pain.
