I thought this was a really interesting take on progressives and privilege and how even progressives, who would seek to avoid asserting privilege in other ways, tend to marginalize children.
Progressive parents, parents who are taking a long-term view of their child’s development, and of society’s development towards justice, are not going to play the “children should be seen and not heard” game. We’re concerned not just with making things easy for the adults around our kids, but with growing our kids into the kind of adults who care about others, and respect those further down on that pyramid.[...]
Maybe that more just world we’re all hoping, looking, and working for comes when we respect everyone’s rights and needs, not just those that impact us, or whose struggles we can sympathize with, or who don’t personally annoy us. And maybe, just maybe, starting out a child’s life by teaching them that they matter, and that they have the right to be treated as a full and equal human being regardless of their size or ability, is the start to changing the larger society so that it recognizes the needs of all its members, regardless of where they fall on that pyramid.
For whatever it’s worth, I don’t actually tend to run into the feral children that the staunchly anti-child folks (such as Ravan in the comment thread in the linked posts) are always ranting about. Nor did I before I had a kid. I suppose they’re out there, but I just don’t see them in the proportions that some seem to suggest.
