Here's a thought about parenting
What I read: This piece from Sarah Jones at New York Magazine. It argues the so-called “parental rights movement” underlying complaints about civil rights history in schools and LGBTQ-themed books in libraries is rooted in authoritarianism.
What I learned: The modern parental rights movement is probably driven by people with strong fascist tendencies.
On March 1st, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy introduced HR5, the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” to Congress. His website summarizes it this way:
The Republican majority in the House passed the bill on March 24th, without a single vote of support from Democrats. Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader, wasted no time in declaring that the bill didn’t have a prayer of passing the upper house.
But similar legislation has already been enacted in Arizona, Florida, and Georgia, and has been introduced in 32 states. All this legislation is aimed at “dramatically strengthening the rights of parents,” in McCarthy’s words. A bill in Indiana would block public schools from teaching “divisive subjects” and allow parents to sue if their child is “exposed to banned lessons.” Florida’s HB 1557, widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, bans teachers from including gender identity or sexual orientation in their lessons. (In April, the state expanded the law to include all grades, not just up to third grade.)Jones writes that from loosening restrictions on child labor to protecting kids from seeing one of the most famous sculptures in human history, these initiatives “betray a conviction that a child is the property of parents.” She refers to To Train Up a Child, a book that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Its authors strongly advocate hitting a child and urge parents to “use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay.” One passage reads: “If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered...Defeat him totally.”
This awful book has been linked to the deaths of at least three children whose parents followed its advice. Here’s a summary of one real-life example the authors included, focused on an incident Michael Pearl uses as a teachable moment:
He relays an example in which his wife interacts with a pouty, fifteen-month-old infant. This is not her own child, but one she was determined to train while he was in her care (the Pearls will only watch other people’s children with the agreement that they may train them while they care for them.). Debi handed this child a roller skate and “took a moment to show him what fun it was to hold it upside down and turn the wheels.” Yet “with defiance, he turned his face away” at which point she “decided it was showdown time.” She picked up a switch, placed the skate in front of him and “gently and playfully said, ‘Turn the wheels.” He refused. She told him again and again he defied. “This time, being assured he fully understood it to be a command, she placed his hand on the wheels, repeated the command, and when no obedience followed, she switched his leg.” This pattern of defiance followed by switching was repeated ten times until he surrendered his will to hers and began to roll the wheel.
Evangelicals make up the biggest audience for this book and, unsurprisingly, have been among the most likely to support “parents’ rights” initiatives since at least the 1970s. After all, it was fundamentalist Christians like William Jennings Bryan who tried to throw a schoolteacher in jail after he led a lesson on evolution.
Many people may not realize that the belief children should be controlled and dominated is linked to support for authoritarian leaders and fascist regimes.
After World War II, there was a widespread effort among some scientists to understand why some people tended to support the Nazis while others fought against them. The scientists surveyed thousands of people in the US with a 77-question test to determine an individual’s propensity to support fascism. As Harvard history professor Peter E. Gordon explains, their research is “a study of what they call the potentially fascist individual, by which they mean they want to figure out: what is it that makes someone susceptible to fascist propaganda?”
In the decades since that research was published, scientists have been able to drastically shorten the fascism questionnaire, from 77 questions to four. All the questions relate to beliefs about child-rearing. You can take it now. Keep in mind that nearly all parents think all these attributes are important for children. The test demands that you prioritize one over the other.
Which do you think is more important for a child to have?
1. Respect for elders vs. independence
2. Obedience vs. self-reliance
3. Good manners vs. curiosity
4. Being well-behaved vs. being considerate
It turns out, peoples’ responses to these four questions are quite accurate in determining their approval of authoritarian figures. It is most accurate, though, when taken by White parents, as African Americans and other people of color tend to interpret the questions differently. Like so many topics that I cover in this newsletter, the debate over which version of the F-scale test (short for “fascism scale”) is best is longstanding and complicated. My point, though, is that there is a strong, scientifically validated connection between a person’s views on children and their fascist leanings. During the 2016 presidential campaign, those who prioritized respect, obedience, manners, and good behavior in children were also more likely to support Donald Trump. As Amanda Taub explained in an excellent piece from that year, “Not only did authoritarianism correlate, but it seemed to predict support for [Donald] Trump more reliably than virtually any other indicator.”
To my eyes, this puts an entirely different spin on the debate over parental rights. Nearly all parents, whether liberal or conservative, believe they should be allowed to determine what is best for their children. What that means—whether they should be permitted to control every detail of their child’s education or refuse to vaccinate them—depends heavily on whether they have authoritarian tendencies. In that light, the current “parental rights movement” is not about the ability to raise your children as you see fit. Parents already have that right, sometimes to a dangerous degree. What it’s about is whether “parent” should be a synonym for authoritarian. After all, one of the sample sentences the Oxford Dictionary uses to demonstrate the meaning of “authoritarian” is: Father was a strict authoritarian.
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