Libertarian Parenting

Content Warning: This article contains discussion about violence, abuse and sexuality

Libertarian Parenting or Libertarian Childrearing refers to the parenting strategies advocated for by anarchistss to allow for the creation of children who accept freedom and responsibility. The basic principles can be summed up as follows: Get rid of authority, moralism, and the desire to “improve” and “civilise” children. Allow them to be themselves, without pushing them around, bribing, threatening, admonishing, lecturing, or otherwise forcing them to do anything. Refrain from action unless the child, by expressing their “freedom” restricts the freedom of others and explain what is wrong about such actions and never mechanically punish.

Libertarian Parenting applied to stages of Parenting

Parenting can roughly be divided between infancy (ages 0 - 4) where a child is completely dependent on the parent for food, movement, protection and emotional well being, childhood (ages 4 - 11) where a child begins to experiment with freedom of movement, food and develops friendships with other children, and finally the teenager years (11 - 18) where a child begins to rapidly mature and experiment with new freedoms, often conflicting with the parent.

Infancy

Upon the birth of a child, it is extremely important for the parents to establish lots of close and gentle physical contact with the child.

Children

Children undergo a 'first puberty at around age 3 to 6, they begin to play with their genitals and the genitals of other children their age. This is a perfectly health, normal and natural behaviour to exhibit, and should not be shamed in the child. This should be encouraged by the parents and not shamed, and nakedness should never be discouraged. Parents should present themselves as naked in a non-sexual context and encourage the child to be naked. However, the child should be told when he is ready to understand that some people don’t like to see children naked and that, in the presence of such people, he should wear clothes.

In no situations should children be physically attacked (including spanking or slaps) or punished with screaming, denial of toys and electronics, shaming or isolation from the parents. These only instill a deep sense of a cruel world in a child who is not capable of developing a rational understanding as to why an action was wrong. This turns children into sadists from an early age, and the development of these sadistic drives create fertile ground for ideas of authoritarianism, racism, war, gendered violence and violent crime.

Cross-cultural research indicates that any kind of violence against children leads to higher rates of violence (notably domestic violence, homicide, assault and wars) among said children later in life than children raised in a nonviolent way. Violence against children is one of the most common and dangerous forms of violence in modern society, it also creates hatred of parents within the child, for example, fantasies of the father’s death, which immediately causes guilt, and so is repressed. Often the hatred induced by punishment emerges in fantasies that are seemingly remote from the parents, such as stories of giant killing - always popular with children because the giant represents the father, a physically larger and seemingly untouchable authority being killed. Obviously, the sense of guilt produced by such fantasies is very advantageous to organised religions that promise redemption from “sin.” It is surely no coincidence that such religions are enthusiastic promoters of the sex-negative morality and disciplinarian child rearing practices that keep supplying them with recruits.

What is worse, however, is that punishment actually creates “problem children.” This is so because the parent arouses more and more hatred (and diminishing trust in other human beings) in the child with each spanking, which is expressed in still worse behaviour, calling for more spankings, and so on, in a vicious circle. In contrast, “The self-regulated child does not need any punishment,” Neill argues, “and he does not go through this hate cycle. He is never punished and he does not need to behave badly. He has no use for lying and for breaking things. His body has never been called filthy or wicked. He has not needed to rebel against authority or to fear his parents. Tantrums he will usually have, but they will be short-lived and not tend toward neurosis (a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviour, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality)”

Criticism and Responses

Irrelevancy

Some would argue that these concerns, especially about sexual liberation, are pretty small compared to other ideas like dismantling the state and capitalism introducing workers' self-management or participatory democracy. Many socialists would even argue that these are distractions from class struggle and anyone who raises these concerns might even be secret capitalists.

However, to create a society centered around freedom also means a society centered around responsibility. This requires a mass psychological revolution that will change people's relationship to one another, and one key part of this will be changing how children are raised. Most of us spend the first 18 years of our lives in perpetual conflict with authoritarian parents (manifesting in screaming matches, awkward silences, frustration and sometimes running away) and this leaves people crippled psychologically for the rest of their lives and unconsciously plants the idea in people's head that people are naturally violent, authoritarian and selfish. Challenging authoritarian parenting is part of a multi-faceted attack on all systems of domination and a necessity towards building the self-managed society that anarchists desire.

If we look at the Mujeres Libres in Revolutionary Spain, "Respecting children and educating them well was vitally important to the process of revolutionary change. Ignorance made people particularly vulnerable to oppression and suffering. More importantly, education prepared people for social life. Authoritarian schools (or families), based upon fear, prepared people to be submissive to an authoritarian government [or within a capitalist workplace]. Different schools and families would be necessary to prepare people to live in a society without domination.”

Notable Theorists

• Alexander Lowen
• Alfie Kohn
• A.S. Neill
• Chris Pallis
• Emma Goldman
• Max Stirner
• Mikhail Bakunin
• Wilhelm Reich

See Also

• Democratic Education
• Self-Determination Theory
• Sexual Liberation