{"id":2103,"date":"2010-05-23T21:43:36","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T04:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/?p=2103"},"modified":"2010-05-23T21:43:36","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T04:43:36","slug":"moving-beyond-%e2%80%9cadultism%e2%80%9d-disrespect-of-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/23\/moving-beyond-%e2%80%9cadultism%e2%80%9d-disrespect-of-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Beyond \u201cAdultism\u201d & Disrespect of Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It is stunning to me the \u201cadultism\u201d 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 \u201cpower-over\u201d protocol that is still considered acceptable by many adults in dealing with their children and youth. That protocol involves the assumption that the \u201csuperior\u201d adult\/parent has the absolute command and control over the \u201cinferior\u201d young person\/child, such that any inappropriate behavior by the \u201cinferior\u201d reflects on and is highly disrespectful to the reputation of their \u201csuperior\u201d and must be forcibly modified to save face.
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\nMy daughter Emma shared an incident with us yesterday that occurred at a family gathering of one of her friends that Emma had attended. One of her friend\u2019s young cousins was bored and began literally climbing the wall by where Emma was seated. Emma told the young boy politely that he really shouldn\u2019t be doing that, concerned mostly that he might fall and hurt himself.
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\nThe kid\u2019s mom saw this happening, came into the room and grabbed her son, and in front of everyone dressed him down, saying that he should have listened to what the nice young lady had told him and that he should now go back over to her, smile, and apologize. When he resisted, she marched him over to Emma and again told him to smile and apologize.
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\nEmma was mortified by the mom\u2019s behavior, but being a guest at a friend\u2019s family gathering, was not sure what to do other than do nothing. The mom continued to scold her son until he finally apologized to Emma.
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\nI\u2019m sure that same woman would never have done this to an adult, even one she was responsible for or somehow supervising. But she felt it was appropriate and even demanded by the situation because this was \u201cher\u201d child and his behavior was profoundly disrespectful and cast aspersions on her and the entire family in front of an honored guest. As I said, it was very patriarchal and \u201cadultist\u201d, even though it was a woman enforcing the \u201ccode\u201d.
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\nIn case you are not familiar with term \u201cadultism\u201d, it is defined as the disrespect and discrimination against young people (simply because they are not adults) that exists beyond the legitimate responsibility of adults \u2013 parents, teachers and others \u2013 to provide guidance and a developmentally appropriate environment for young people to mature to adulthood. (See my posts on \u201cDefining Adultism\u201d<\/strong><\/a> and \u201cThe Dimensions of Adultism\u201d<\/strong><\/a>.)
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\nIt is also a perfect example of the sort of power-over command and control of patriarchal practice, which remains strong in many families, particularly in the political dynamics of the relationships between adults and children. (See my posts on this topic starting with \u201cDefining Patriarchy\u201d<\/strong><\/a>.) Our civilization has come along way to move away from treating other adults as slaves or chattel, but the way we treat our youth may be the last bastion of this 5000-year-old social order of hierarchy, domination and control.
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\nEven though the kid\u2019s behavior was inappropriate, the mom should have showed this younger human being some basic human respect. If he had been an adult, she most likely would have talked to him in private and not humiliated him in front of Emma and everyone else within earshot. But in this incident the parent felt it was appropriate and even necessary to subject him to this ordeal.
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\nWhat we are talking about here is a different definition of \u201crespect\u201d than the patriarchal one, which is automatic respect for your \u201csuperiors\u201d, while having to gain their respect through your appropriate behavior. What does a non-hierarchical \u201cmutual respect\u201d between adult and child really mean or look like?
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\nIf I were this child\u2019s parent in this situation, I would probably physically get down on the child\u2019s level so I could look straight into his eyes rather than looking down on him. I would explain that we had guests in the house and that what he was doing was dangerous and also making our guests uncomfortable. I would ask him if he was doing this because he was bored, and if so would acknowledge that boredom, and I would ask what could possibly be done to address it. I would ask him if he would like to apologize, and if not, I would apologize to my guest and explain that my son was the only young child at the party and was bored.
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\nIt is interesting how these patriarchal customs perpetuate through hundreds of generations from their roots in militaristic pastoralist tribes that invaded \u201cOld Europe\u201d from the Eastern periphery, several thousand years before the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) emerged. (This is at least as it is theorized by archeologist Marija Gimbutas<\/strong><\/a> and documented in Riane Eisler\u2019s book, The Chalice and the Blade<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.)
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\n200 years ago these protocols were still considered appropriate by white Europeans for dealing with their adult chattel, including their wives and black slaves. Two centuries of struggling for racial and gender equality have challenged and invalidated the concept of adult chattel, at least from Western civilization, though remnants of this form of patriarchal control certainly still remain in continuing racial and gender bias.
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\nBut it is still considered okay for parents to treat their children as chattel, within certain legal limits enacted during the 20th Century for child protection. It is still built into our laws that parents (or their surrogates, like school teachers) are considered completely responsible for children under their charge. And though corporal punishment is no longer legal in schools, last I heard it is still legal at home, as long as it doesn\u2019t cross the legal line of \u201cchild abuse\u201d.
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\nSo how much longer before this archaic power-over protocol is finally and completely driven from our egalitarian culture? How long before it is generally accepted that the relationships between adults and children can be mutually respectful, and based on the partnership protocols of power-with facilitation rather than patriarchal power-over command and control?
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\nI have to acknowledge that redefining the political dynamics of the relationship between adults and youth is difficult. Within the concepts of liberty, justice and equality that our contemporary Western society was founded on, complete adult equality is the obvious progression. But adults have a legitimate role of stewardship vis-\u00e0-vis young people, and youth aren\u2019t considered capable of full citizenship, so isn\u2019t \u201cyouth equality\u201d (with adults) an oxymoron?
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\nThis seems to me to be one of the major challenges of this new century. To create new generally accepted protocols for relationships between adults and youth that are based on liberty and mutual respect, but acknowledge the legitimate stewardship role adults play assisting youth with coming of age.
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\nI think it can start with dialog between parents and children, teachers and students, counselors and campers, etc about the dynamics of the relationship and each party\u2019s stake in that relationship.
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\nAs to existing models of this approach, I believe the greatest aspect of the Unitarian-Universalism that I embrace and my own kids have grown up within is the way that UU camps, conferences and other events for older youth are almost completely youth led, with adults playing as minimal a role as is legally possible (See my piece \u201cCamps, Cons & Compasses\u201d<\/strong><\/a>). In my opinion, this governance model could be applied to many more of the institutions in our society where adults as stewards work with youth, including our schools.
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\nIf these ideas seem like the path forward to you as well, you might check out the website of the Institute for Democratic Education in America<\/strong><\/a> (IDEA), an organization recently established by people I know that is trying to bring the principles of democracy and youth empowerment to our education system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is stunning to me the \u201cadultism\u201d 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 \u201cpower-over\u201d protocol that is still considered acceptable by many adults in dealing with their children and youth. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[632,856,113,756,852,855,853,854,166],"class_list":["post-2103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-including-between-adults-and-youth","tag-adultism","tag-democracy-and-youth","tag-respect-for-youth","tag-youth-and-adults","tag-youth-and-democracy","tag-youth-as-chattel","tag-youth-equality","tag-youth-politics","tag-youth-rights"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2103"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2114,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions\/2114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}