“One who proudly advocates coercion and sets out to coerce, as opposed to one who coerces inadvertently or has qualms about the coercion they fear necessary.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
“I am familiar with the word ‘coercive’ but what do you mean by ‘coercionist’? If you mean ‘coercive [parent]’ why use this strange word instead of the simple one?”
What I mean by ‘coercionist’ is one who advocates coercion: “What you’re proposing is an abdication of parental responsibility. Kids sometimes NEED to forced—there, I said it, yes forced—for their own good or for the good of others.” “Yes, we coerce our children and, in reality, we’re proud of it.” “It is parents who are too afraid of their kids to insist and enforce where necessary who are responsible for the prison population. So-called “non coercion” serves no one, least of all the kids themselves.”
The problem with saying ‘coercive parent’ (apart from the fact that it is ad hominem!) is that it mistakenly implies that some of us have reached the dizzy heights of perfect knowledge such that we never inadvertently coerce. That is likely to create an unhealthy insiders-versus-outsiders feeling, and it may propel people into feeling bad about themselves and giving up. But actually, no one is perfectly non-coercive. I myself am still discovering ways in which I have been being inadvertently coercive despite my strong desire and efforts not to be.
So (to the extent people want to speak in such regrettably ad hominem terms in the first place!) we need a word to distinguish not between those who are coercive and those who are perfectly noncoercive, but between those who advocate coercion (or who are adamant that some problems are inherently not solvable) and those who are drawn to the idea that problems are soluble (i.e., thoroughly noncoercively) and whose way of being and acting actively embodies that idea (even though, being fallible and not omniscient, they sometimes fail to create the necessary knowledge in the moment, sometimes make mistakes, sometimes are coercive, and may be coercive in particular ways and not yet have noticed that coercion).
My Oxford English Dictionary (second edition, 1989, Volume III, p. 435) defines ‘coercionist’ as “One who advocates or supports government by coercion; esp. in modern English politics, one who supports such government in Ireland.” None of the many definitions it gives for ‘coercive’ talks about advocating coercion, and I am unaware of another word having that meaning, so I decided to adopt the word ‘coercionist’, which was used the way I am using it, in a book published about a hundred years ago, whose author clearly believed that he was arguing for childhood without coercion.
See also:
- Book review of The Sovereign Child by Aaron Stupple with Logan Chipkin
- Intimidation called ‘influence’
- “What do you think?”
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 2022, Taking Children Seriously FAQ: ‘“What do you mean by ‘coercionist’?”’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/what-do-you-mean-by-coercionist/