It is stunning to me the “adultism” demonstrated by the disrespectful ways many adults still treat children and youth, particularly their own kids. I think it is one of the last vestiges in our society of pure patriarchal “power-over” protocol that is still considered acceptable by many adults in dealing with their children and youth. That protocol involves the assumption that the “superior” adult/parent has the absolute command and control over the “inferior” young person/child, such that any inappropriate behavior by the “inferior” reflects on and is highly disrespectful to the reputation of their “superior” and must be forcibly modified to save face.

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The pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church over the past 25 years is just one more example of the societal axiom that “power corrupts”. The phrase is actually a bit too simplistic, not all forms of power necessarily corrupt. I would say more specifically that power exercised from the top down (what some delineate as “power-over”) inevitably leads to some form of corruption if the people subjected to this form of leadership are not involved in the governance process and/or do not have comparable power of their own to check the actions of their leaders. This was a key factor motivating the American Revolution (e.g. “taxation without representation”), the French Revolution and many other similar insurrections… part of a larger trend in the world to move from authoritarian toward more egalitarian models of governance. This other idea of power flowing from empowered consent of the group is what is delineated as “power-with”. (more…)

An old rule of thumb of folk wisdom that I have adopted wholeheartedly is that, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. I wouldn’t call this conventional wisdom, since applied to folks rather than fowl it challenges the path of least resistance of the patriarchal thread still strongly woven through our cultural trajectory. But I would recommend it as a simple metric for implementing the Golden Rule and promoting a society based on partnership rather than patriarchy.

A simple application of this rule, but metaphorically powerful I think in challenging male supremacy, is the logic of opening doors for other people. When I come to a doorway in a store or at my work just before another man I open the door for him, since I would do so for a woman. Conversely, if a woman gets to the door just before me I am comfortable letting them open it for me, since if the situation were reversed, I would be comfortable opening the door for her. (more…)

My mom had always said that, “Kids will tell you what they need”. That was her way of saying she respected a young person’s ability to know what was best for them. But when our pre-teen son started telling us with his behavior that his middle school was not what he needed, we were not listening, and that failure led to what I recall as the darkest period of my parenting experience. (more…)