“Life does not have to involve either ruling or being ruled. Instead, we can stand side by side with no one ruling, all of us free to be in control of our own life, solving problems individually and jointly, and having fun doing so.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
“Are you advocating that the children should rule the parents?! That’s what it sounds like to me!”
If you’re an authoritarian who believes that the correct way to relate with your children is that you are in charge and your children must ask your permission to do things, and you decide whether or not to ‘let’ them, it may look as though I am suggesting jumping from you ruling to the children being in charge, and you yourself having to ask their permission, but this question is making what Karl Popper called the ‘who should rule’ error.
Karl Popper pointed out that given that we are all fallible human beings who make mistakes, instead of asking ‘who should rule?’, we should instead be aware of the danger of power and authority no matter who has it, and we should instead create systems that promote error correction, such as political systems in which bad rulers can be replaced.
So instead of asking who should rule, what I advocate is that the whole family get what they want, not just you, and not just the children either. Problems are soluble. Whilst there can be no guarantee that we as fallible human beings with blind spots and baggage will find it at the time, it’s vital to take seriously the idea that there
The fact that the obligations are asymmetrical is just a fact of the situation and is really uncontroversial. People only think it is odd in the context of taking children seriously, but actually, just about everybody agrees that parents have obligations to their children that their children do not have towards them.
Calling that “children ruling” is like saying that the old lady you are helping across the street is ruling you, but that’s not the case, it’s just a feature of politeness in a given situation.
Life does not have to involve either ruling or being ruled. Instead, we can stand side by side with no one ruling, all of us free to be in control of our own life, solving problems individually and jointly, and having fun doing so.
See also:
- Surely it is cruel to force people to live with the consequences of the ideas and preferences they had when they were children?
- What do you mean by non-coercive? What is the difference between coercion and non-coercion?
- The rationalist mistake
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 2022, Taking Children Seriously FAQ: ‘Are you advocating that the children should rule the parents?!’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/are-you-advocating-that-the-children-should-rule-the-parents/
I heard a woman ask a 2 1/2 year old which way she wanted to go. The child was seated in a stroller, and the woman pushing it was her babysitter. As they proceeded (I accompanied them), the child became more demanding, more defiant, more unhappy. Of course, I thought, the child doesn’t need open ended choices, it’s making her feel insecure, perhaps unsafe, especially with a non-family member coming along for the walk.
I asked the woman why she let a child make decisions for them, and she told me it was the mother’s style, so she adopted it to be consistent with the little one. Everybody was comfortable it seemed. As a mother of adults, I spent the rest of the walk imagining how this absence of guidance might shape a young person. How will she behave toward her mother as she grows into her teen years?