Let Them Leave!
Let's talk about the most effective thing we can do to curb child abuse.
Most abuse doesn't involve physically locking a victim up 24/7. Instead, it relies on a combination of psychological and structural constraints to keep the victim trapped. While in the past, most discussion of abuse focused on physical or sexual abuse, there's now a general understanding that abuse doesn't have to leave physical marks to be devastating.
Abusers work best in gray areas. They keep their victims wondering:
- Was that okay for them to do?
- Maybe they didn't really mean it.
- But what if they had good intentions?
- Besides, where would I go?
At this point, it's fairly common knowledge that abusers use subtle tactics like gaslighting to make their victims question their own perceptions and stay around longer. But what we don't discuss nearly often enough is how many legal, political, economic, and social structures are designed to keep victims trapped as well. I don't just mean the way that abusers leverage and "misuse" these structures. I mean that keeping people trapped in exploitative situations is a central aspect of how our entire society works.
Today I want to talk about child abuse and exploitation in the home. I'll discuss what structures enable abuse, and give some ideas for what we can do as a society to prevent it as much as possible.
Table of Contents
Behind Closed Doors
Child abuse in the home
The vast majority of child abuse happens in the home. It's where children spend most of their time, especially in early childhood. It's also where the outside world has very little oversight. According to a 2022 report by the US Children's Bureau, out of 434,090 perpetrators of child abuse and neglect, 76% were parents of the victim. Keep in mind that these numbers only represent cases that were officially reported and investigated by law enforcement.
Most child abuse isn't reported, for several reasons:
- Children don't have consistent access to reporting mechanisms; most reporting is done by professionals such as teachers and police.
- The consequences of reporting might be more than the child is willing to risk (and abusers know & leverage that). If their parent is arrested, the child could be upending their entire lives. The child might not be able to live in their home anymore, and their parents' arrest could lead to job loss and other major consequences. Children are (for the most part) deeply attached to their parents, and they often don't want to cause their parents harm even as their parents are abusing them.
- Abusers, again, are very good at toeing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It can be difficult for children to tell when they're being abused. Even when children know they're being abused, it can be really hard to convince others around them to help, as abusers are also very good at controlling the narrative about their actions and maintaining their good reputations.
- Legally, parental abuse is famously hard to define and prosecute. Violence against children that would be considered assault if done to an adult is still an extremely common method of discipline. Emotional and verbal abuse is even more difficult to pin down. Even though verbal abuse is more common than other types, it doesn't have a clear definition, and it doesn't have official recognition as a type of child maltreatment (severe abuse or neglect). Child labor that would be illegal in any other case is perfectly legal when parents employ their children.
- Children aren't allowed to access food, shelter, medical care, or other basic needs independently of a parent or guardian. If they're taken away from their parents, they risk facing even worse conditions in foster care or state custody.
The system of justice we have is punitive, not restorative. That means that it focuses much more on "punishing criminals" after the fact than it does on making sure the victims can heal and regain autonomy. That can make it near impossible to leave when a child depends on their abuser financially, emotionally, and/or physically (like for disability care).
And, of course, "punishing criminals" means that low-income Black families are disproportionately targeted for separation by yet another racist policing system, while affluent parents are viewed as more caring and competent even when the data shows otherwise. This isn't just the family policing system (aka the child welfare system) being misused by bad actors - it's central to how it operates.
The combination of all these factors means that up to 90% of child abuse goes unreported and unaddressed. The core problems here are a lack of youth autonomy and of parental oversight, but instead of fixing those, a massive legal movement is underway to further entrench parents' ownership over children as their property. Under the guise of "fighting state repression" and "supporting religious freedom," lobbyists and legislators are working to strip the few protections children have under the current system.
Parents are statistically the greatest threats to children's well-being. It's a basic fact of our society. But our current system does a very bad job of preventing abuse from happening - what can we do that actually works?
How do we prevent abuse?
There are three steps to effectively preventing child abuse:
- Identifying the real source of the abuse
- Giving children autonomy at every level of society
- Building additional systems of accessibility and accountability
Identifying the Source
Many people think that abuse happens when a type of "bad person" decides to harm another person. There's an idea that there are abusers hidden among all of us "good people," simply waiting to find their next targets. People also believe that certain mental health disorders (especially NPD, BPD, and other personality disorders) make a person more likely to be an abuser.
The idea that we could end abuse if only we could catch, educate, or remove all the abusers in society can be a comforting one. And it can definitely be draining and miserable to interact with people who are being manipulative and disrespectful. But this framework doesn't accurately reflect how dynamics of abuse operate, how people get trapped in them, or why they're so harmful.
What is truly at the core of any abusive relationship is an imbalance of power. Abusers abuse people not (just) because they're bad people, but because they get something out of it and can leverage power over their target to keep them trapped. Many abusers do this deliberately, often because they believe in their superiority over their victim. But huge imbalances of power in a relationship can make even small mistakes on the powerful person's part absolutely devastating for the less powerful person. The lack of intention/maliciousness behind one person's actions doesn't erase the harm done to the other, and an imbalance of power only increases the scale of harm.
Child abuse is no different. Child abuse doesn't just happen because parents decide to have kids in order to abuse them. Parents get away with all kinds of abuse because they have total power over their children's survival.
Children understand this from a fairly young age: in one 2023 study of 206 4-to-7 year olds, the participants consistently affirmed their belief that children are "owned" by their parents (much to the surprise/distress of their parents). In the third experiment in the study, when they were asked whether an autonomous (independent) vs. a non-autonomous child were owned by their parent, the participants were much less likely to say that the autonomous child was owned. Also, the researchers concluded about the second experiment:
In Experiment 2, children mostly judged that parents own children, but children do not own parents, and teachers and students do not own each other. This suggests that children are not confusing family relationships for ownership, nor do they see children as being owned by any adult with authority. Instead, they specifically see children as being owned by their parents. The finding that children do not think teachers own children might be surprising, since children lack autonomy relative to teachers, and teachers, like parents, exert control over children’s actions. However, children recognize that parents have ultimate authority over what happens to their children (e.g., Yau et al., 2009), and this may lead them to conclude that only parents should be considered owners.
This dynamic of ownership is the biggest reason child abuse happens. It's also deeply entrenched in our society at every legal, political, economic, and social level. Some excerpts from US Supreme Court cases:
Reno v. Flores (1993)
"The best interests of the child," a venerable phrase familiar from divorce proceedings, is a proper and feasible criterion for making the decision as to which of two parents will be accorded custody. But it is not traditionally the sole criterion-much less the sole constitutional criterion-for other, less narrowly channeled judgments involving children, where their interests conflict in varying degrees with the interests of others.
"The best interests of the child" is not the legal standard that governs parents' or guardians' exercise of their custody: So long as certain minimum requirements of child care are met, the interests of the child may be subordinated to the interests of other children, or indeed even to the interests of the parents or guardians themselves.
Troxel v. Granville (2000) - this one's a long one
The liberty interest at issue in this case - the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court. More than 75 years ago, in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399, 401 (1923), we held that the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause includes the right of parents to "establish a home and bring up children" and "to control the education of their own." Two years later, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 534-535 (1925), we again held that the "liberty of parents and guardians" includes the right "to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control." We explained in Pierce that "[t]he child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations." Id., at 535. We returned to the subject in Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158 (1944), and again confirmed that there is a constitutional dimension to the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. "It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder." Id., at 166.
In subsequent cases also, we have recognized the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children. See, e. g., Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645, 651 (1972) ("It is plain that the interest of a parent in the companionship, care, custody, and management of his or her children 'come[s] to this Court with a momentum for respect lacking when appeal is made to liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrangements'" (citation omitted)); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 232 (1972) ("The history and culture of Western civilization reflect a strong tradition of parental concern for the nurture and upbringing of their children. This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition"); Quilloin v. Walcott, 434 U. S. 246, 255 (1978) ("We have recognized on numerous occasions that the relationship between parent and child is constitutionally protected"); Parham v. J. R., 442 U. S. 584, 602 (1979) ("Our jurisprudence historically has reflected Western civilization concepts of the family as a unit with broad parental authority over minor children. Our cases have consistently followed that course"); Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U. S. 745, 753 (1982) (discussing "[t]he fundamental liberty interest of natural parents in the care, custody, and management of their child"); Glucksberg, supra, at 720 ("In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the 'liberty' specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes the righ[t] ... to direct the education and upbringing of one's children" (citing Meyer and Pierce)). In light of this extensive precedent, it cannot now be doubted that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.
So yes, the Supreme Court has supported parents' ownership of their children for a very long time. Same with many other Western institutions. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, just because we've been doing something for a long time doesn't make it right.
Child abuse won't be solved by taking power away from parents and giving it all to the government. (That's been tried plenty of times and it hasn't turned out well.) Child abuse will get better only by taking power away from parents and giving it to the kids.
Supporting Autonomy
Autonomy is the capacity of self-governance: the ability to make decisions about your own life. Nobody has absolute or unconditional autonomy - our lives are affected by systems of power and by luck more than they are by our own choices. But there's definitely a spectrum of how much autonomy people are able to access, and on that spectrum, children definitely have the least.
Most people believe that this happens naturally. Children, after all, are new to the world. They start off with very few skills of navigating the world and build more over time. If we gave children autonomy, wouldn't they just hurt themselves? Isn't it better to just take care of them until they can take care of themselves?
chorui halim
I don't think so. I've been a child (obviously), and I've also worked with children for many, many years. What I've seen, over and over, is that children of any age are capable of much more than adults ever give them credit for. Children have the capacity to make all kinds of decisions for themselves - what they lack most often is the power to enforce that will over the people around them.
There are plenty of ways that we can support children's legal, economic, political, and social autonomy. (How we do that is a long and complicated discussion - for another post.) But the basic idea is that children are capable of understanding the world around them, and they are capable of expressing what is in their best interest.
One of the most powerful things we can do to undermine abuse is to let children leave. That means making sure that all children:
- Can access independently from their parents all the food, education, medical care, and other basic things they need
- Can always leave their homes independently and safely whenever they want, whether for a short time or a long time
- Always have respectful/equitable relationships with people outside their family
- Always have another safe, clean, and comfortable place to go
- That they know where it is
- That they know how to get there
- That they know who and how to call for help
- Know how abuse works and when it's happening to them
- Have access to measures of restorative justice
- That, if desired, they can address the conflict with their parents with a mediator of their choosing
- That they can freely access various ways to process their trauma
- That they have extra emotional and material support during this phase
- That they can choose how to proceed with their lives
This process alone cuts to the core of how abuse is able to perpetuate. It removes the power that parents hold over children. If parents want their children to stick around under this system, they have to treat them with respect.
But it's not enough to just build systems and claim they work this way without verifying that they actually do.
Accessibility and Accountability
We can't rely on parents to treat their children well because we ask nicely - remember, abuse continues because the abuser gets something out of it. We have to balance the dynamic by force, and we have to make sure that all children can access the systems that support their autonomy. Especially the most vulnerable children.
Building systems that actually support children's autonomy also isn't just a linear process. It's an iterative one - meaning it involves repetition. I'll use the Software Development Life Cycle as an example of how systems are developed.
In linear development, we would investigate the problem, analyze and define requirements for a solution, design the solution, implement it, test it, and then open it up to the public. But it's missing a crucial process.
In iterative development, after the system is opened to the public, we collect user feedback and address their criticisms & suggestions in the next round of the cycle. This is a process of accountability - if the system doesn't work the way it's supposed to, the users can let the developers know. This process also helps systems stay up to date over time.
But as we've seen with countless technologies that have become enshittified, even following the SDLC isn't enough to make sure a form of technology is good and stays good. Materialism helps us understand that enshittification (becoming worse over time) happens because the people who have the most power over tech development aren't the users but the investors. The investors want to increase their profit, so everything about development becomes about extracting profit - even if that means the system gets worse for users.
chorui halim
How can we apply this lesson to designing and implementing systems that increase children's autonomy? By making sure that the people with the most power in the development and review processes are children, not their parents or other adults. We need to prioritize children's perspectives not just when we're planning the system or collecting feedback after releasing it, but at every step of development.
There's more:
- The children involved in the process need the whole context. They need to be fully familiar with the history of children's oppression and the ways it currently manifests in various societies.
- The children need to be able to make decisions as independently as possible. No parents, religious leaders, politicians, police, or other adults whispering in their ears and telling them what to say. The process needs to minimize survey manipulation and the threat of retribution.
- The children need to be able to ask for help when they don't understand something and work collaboratively to find the best solutions.
- We should take feedback from all kinds of children into account, but the children who have the most experience having the least autonomy and struggle the most under the current systems of domination should be given priority. This means abused/traumatized children and multiply marginalized children. People who are perfectly happy under and benefit from the current system don't generally understand the need for change as acutely as the people who are being crushed by it.
- Solutions should be localized and customized to meet the needs of the children living in the immediate area. Different children in different socioeconomic contexts need different things.
Is this type of development expensive? It can be. Difficult? Yep. Complicated? Definitely. But above all, it's necessary. Without this process of building autonomy and accountability, we will never be able to end child abuse. Anything else we try doesn't get at the core causes of abuse (or the structures incentivizing it).
Can children truly understand their own best interest?
Adults will often disagree with children about what constitutes children's best interest, but that isn't because adults are always more knowledgeable or are always right. Adults and children are simply working off two different sets of data, including:
- Independent interpretations of the current context
- Desire (or lack of desire) to adhere to specific norms
- Awareness of probable consequences of actions
- What they are
- How likely they are
- How to handle them
These two different sets of data often lead adults and children to draw different conclusions. In an equitable environment, the adults and children would work together to each adjust their understanding and actions according to new data. Special consideration would be given to the fact that the decisions that primarily affect children should be thoroughly understood and agreed to by children.
But we don't live in an equitable environment. Adults can just impose their will on children - they don't have to go through any justification or accountability process to do so.
Crucially, it is also in the best interest of adults to keep children in a subordinate position:
- Many parents profit off of their children's productive labor with very little accountability for how that money is saved or spent. Even beyond that, having children gives parents in most societies social and economic benefits. These benefits in large part depend on keeping children 1) as lesser than adults and 2) in line with other societal norms.
- Adult society in general benefits massively from forcing young people to perform unpaid educational labor for 15-20 years in order to gain entry into the workforce.
- The subordination of children provides the blueprint for other methods of taking away autonomy, like incarceration, conservatorships, and psychiatric institutionalization.
If children had more power and autonomy, adults would have to make a lot of potentially difficult and expensive changes - personally and structurally - to accommodate them. It's easier and cheaper for adults to keep this dynamic the way that it is.
So when adults say they understand children's best interests, they're often actually thinking about adults' best interest - whether their own or their grown children's. Some might describe this as "long-term thinking," but that description ignores the conflict of interest inherent to this point of view.
Conclusion
Child abuse doesn't just happen because adults are mean and like to mistreat children. Child abuse happens because of the imbalance of power between adults (mainly parents) and children, the structural incentives that encourage abuse, and the denial of autonomy to children. We can address child abuse by:
- Trusting that children have the capacity to recognize their own best interest given adequate access to information/education
- Providing them ways to meet their needs independently from their family
- Instilling an understanding of unhealthy vs. healthy relationships
- Through education
- Through real-life experience
- Making sure children can always
- Leave their homes for however long they want
- Have somewhere safe and comfortable to go
- Find out how to get there
- Implementing restorative (not punitive/carceral) methods of justice
- Implementing methods of accountability to make sure this all actually works
These systems may be difficult or expensive to set up, but children's lives depend on it. If we refuse to implement them, what we're saying is that we're willing to sacrifice children's mental and physical health for the sake of adult convenience. That's unacceptable. As caregivers, we have to understand these basic dynamics and organize to change them at every level of society.
And if we fail to (or even if we don't), children must do it for themselves. Their lack of political representation has resulted in their near-total removal from general society, which only makes them more vulnerable to abuse. The fundamental solution to this is for children to collectively assert and enforce their own best interest. For the sake of their own survival, the children must unionize once again.
Resources
Child Abuse and Neglect
Rebekah Riess, Rafael Romo
Edwin Rios
Tiffany Sharples
Childism/Ageism/Adult Supremacy
Authors Anne McGillivray
Paternalism in Other Systems
Carla J. Simmons
Andrea Michelson
Standpoint Epistemology and Intersectionality
https://egyankosh.ac.in/handle/123456789/46117
Kimberle Crenshaw