How does an anarchist bring up his own children? How does he justify imposing rules and limits on them for their own safety? Would you make your seven year old child wear a helmet on their bicycle? Would you let them play soccer next to a busy road? Use a deep fat fryer? etc.
If the answer is “oh, but they are children, they can’t appreciate the risks, so I have to guide them in that regard”, then how do you handle the transition from childhood to adulthood? It would be crazy to say on the day before their 16th? (18th?) birthday, “they’re a child, I make the rules”, then the next day suddenly switch to, “they’re an adult, they can do what they want”. Presumably there must be some shades of grey in the transition where perhaps the number of/degree of rule enforcement diminishes. And if that’s the case then what metric do you use for determining the degree to which your child obeys your rules? Is it purely to do with age, or their intelligence or your estimation of your own child’s ability to avoid danger, or what?
I would say that you cannot make a wrong rule for them to follow and that their following of your rules is contingent upon their parasitic nature. For example, you may like certain state rules such as wearing your seatbelt or helmet while riding a bike, you may not, which ever you decide is in good health the same way that employer may decided which rules his workers should follow. Their following is contingent upon them wanting to work there. The child is not a slave nor is the worker. They may leave when they are ready.
Thus, my house, therefore my rules is equivalent to my place of work, therefore my rules.
What do you do if your child refuses point blank to obey one of your rules? Do you use force? If it was an employee of yours at your office you can just say “you’re fired, get out”… but its your kid… what do you do?
Using the metric of as long as they want to live there, they obey the rules. Once they decide they want to leave, they don’t have to anymore. Of course in our current society, children are restricted from working, so you have to gauge it based on when they could leave.
What if your child is 8 years old and you’ve just refused to give them that fifth helping of chocolate ice cream and they say, “I don’t like you any more, I’m leaving!” and they storm out of the house. Its after dark, you live near a busy road (+++ plus more miscellaneous dangers)… what do you do then?
If your answer involves something along the lines of “Heck’ he’s only 8, of course he’s just a kid, I know better, I won’t let him leave”, then what if he was 9? 10? 11? 12? 13? 14?.. are you going to abruptly flip from “Heck’ he’s only X, of course he’s just a kid, I know better, I won’t let him leave” to “He’s an adult now, he’s free to go”? Is there no grey area?
And having rights, or not having rights is a non-sequitur point to the topic Mick brought up.
P.S. Do us a favor Mick and read up on Spidey’s other post on his argument that children have no rights. It would be most unfortunate if this thread just turned into yet another 10 page debate in that subject matter.
As an anarchist with an 8-year old son and 6-month old daughter, here’s my approach. My son understands that I make the rules because I own the property we live in, and that if he wants to make his own rules he can run away at any time. He also understands that he owns his body and that since I respect the NAP, I will only exercise rules that are designed to teach him how to not be a dumbass. I home school him to shield him from government conditioning and mostly let him learn what and how he wishes (though I do train him a bit in the trivium and math). I pay him to do chores, but at a reduced rate to reflect the cost of living in my home. He buys all his own toys with money that he’s earned around the house – I don’t believe that allowances teach the proper economic relationships. I don’t really enforce bedtime, since as a kid I would just read under the covers with a flashlight all night, so I never really saw the point of fighting your biological clock. We get up when we feel like it. I believe in hitting him as a punishment because it reminds him that force is the ultimate arbiter of society, and that while our cause might be just we must have the strength to fight, in the end. So he needs to learn how to get hit, how to deal with pain. I don’t go through the humiliating ritual of spanking, I just headflick him when he violates a rule.
I let him decide whether to wear a helmet, but I encourage him not to. I’ve never believed in helmets, they imply that biking is dangerous. We don’t wear helmets to walk down the sidewalk, nor should we to bike around. I am a hardcore biker, btw.
I don’t let him near the frying fat. He likes to learn how to cook but understands that I don’t think he is mature enough to handle such a dangerous item. He’s a fairly cautious lad so he doesn’t want to mess with it if he understands the danger involved.
My son understands that I’m kicking him out at 18, but he can leave before then any time he wants. I think people really underestimate how resourceful kids can be, I personally ran away a few times as a kid and never really had a problem getting by. Right now he wouldn’t dream of leaving, since he loves us so much and wants to be around us so much, but also because he’s still scared of the outside world. Maybe he’ll feel differently in his teens. He understands the power of entrepreneurship so when he’s on his own, he’ll be all right.
Are you talking about the posts where Spidey claims that children have no rights because he asserts that they cannot reason, then admits that he doesn’t know if it is true that children cannot reason, yet continues to assert that they cannot reason, then, when asked what evidence he would require to prove that children can reason, he gives a red herring?
Thats the one, and it just dawned on me last night, thanks to a discussion amongst local ancaps, that his premise is built from an incorrect definition of rights. I’ll be making a new post about it shortly.
I personally think this is a result of backwards thinking on the part of most parents. It goes something like this: Activity X could be dangerous, unhealthy, etc… My kid isn’t able to understand danger, health etc… Therefore I will make a rule that prevents them from harming themselves.
To me the whole point of raising a child into adulthood is to get them to the point that they don’t need you. Here’s how I see it: Activity X could be dangerous, unhealthy, etc… My job (one of them anyway) as a parent is to help my kid understand danger, health, etc.. Therefore I will share my knowledge of the world with my kid and guide them to make a wise descision.
Mick, it seems you presume that anarchists contend that there would be no rules, or authority. This is not the case, or if you have read this somewhere can you send us a link?
It would be an empty threat to make such a rule unless there was a predetermined consequence for breaking it. I love my son and want to give him as much freedom as i can. There is probably nothing he could do to me that could ever make me refuse him the basic needs. Thus, there are limits on the consequences i can render.
However, in a free society i believe that a parent should be able to cut ties from their child if that is what they choose and I don’t believe an implicit contract exists between a child and an adult nor do I believe there is a positive right implicitly placed on the adult to raise their child. I also don’t agree with Blocks’ analogy of contacting an outside party before cutting off ties to a child and this position leads to some horrendous conclusions, but liberty is itself beautiful, not all the consequences of it.