Equal relationships with our children?! How are parents and children are equals?!
Children are no less creative and rational than adults, whether or not they yet have the explicit language in which to express themselves.
moral agent
How is the word ‘parenting’ not taking children seriously?
Why is it that there is a word “parenting” but no word “childing”? Because in our culture, children are not taken seriously. Words like “parenting” embody the idea of hierarchical, top-down paternalistic/authoritarian parent-child relationships in which the parent is actively doing to the child and the child is passively done to. The parent is actively moulding and shaping the child from above.
How to read this site
Ultimately, we all (including our children!) have to do what we ourselves think best, what feels right to us ourselves, not what someone else says is right. We are all moral agents in our own right. When we self-coercively override our own wisdom and do what someone else thinks we should be doing, we are acting wrongly by our own lights. No good can come of that. Treat this site as a source of speculative guesses and interesting arguments, not as an authority you should obey.
Vegetarian parents, meat-eating child
If something shouldn’t be illegal because it’s wrong to force people to comply with the moral theory without agreeing with it, then it’s wrong to force one’s own children to comply with it.
What Taking Children Seriously is, and what it is not
A 2001 take on taking children seriously.
He who sleeps with dogs wakes up with fleas
How to handle other parents expecting you to coerce their children when their children are visiting your home.
Violating parents’ rights of conscience
When I criticise parental coercion, parents sometimes complain that I am violating parents’ rights—the right to interact with their children according to their own conscience. Children too should be free to act according to their own conscience.