@alexstacy such depth of thought and detail here! I admire your command of language and your thoughts flow well in this piece. Big ups to Ahva, Alais, StarTribe, and Taylor!
However one line really caught my attention and I feel I must beg to differ with it.
You said "You can either maintain that responsibility according to our standards or have your children taken from you and be required to fight to get them back."
On it's own, this to me is a frighteningly polarized statement. It is this mentality that leads to State ownership of children. It is the false collective of the day, but the collective as it stands. CPS is, as you said you are aware, far from functioning on the village level you spoke of. Abuse and manipulation of the system is rampant.
"Our standards"? This is an incredbly difficult thing to define, especially given the enormous size of the communities we live in. There are so many opinions of what a standard should be, and just because a majority comes to a decision doesn't mean it should be applied by force to everyone.
I thought of two examples that apply to either side of the argument.
First is the story of the fundamentalist Christian family that decided to forego uncontroversial medical treatment for their child and chose instead to pray over her until she died of a curable ailment. That would seem to be negligent and abusive and a place where the community might have done well to intervene. (Yet still there is the question of religious freedom, but we'll leave that one out for now.) In this case the community philosophy applies.
The other is the story of the rural family, living off grid and living directly off the land. In the city it is considered abuse to allow a 12 year old to do physical or manual labor, yet for the family it may be necessary and perfectly acceptable to teach their 12 year old to drive a tractor and plant crops and haul bags of grain. In this case the individual or property rights philosophy applies. That is their child and they need it to work for the family to survive, which in turn bears a sense of community in itself.
Either way, the child's destiny is controlled by a parent or a community, and the control constitutes a right or a claim, which is the essence of property. To take responsibility for something is like owning it. We hold each other accountable for our actions because we own ourselves.
So who gets to decide what constitutes neglect or abuse? My mother spanked me a few times growing up and to me (now) that is a margin of abuse. Should she have been stripped of her right to raise me because of that? Did that make her a bad parent? Of course not, but if we abide by a strict policy of allowing communal authority to override the individual (in which that particular community considered all forms of physical discipline to be abusive) then she would have been deemed "bad."
And as you said before you know of the corruption in the system at all levels. CPS is an enormous gateway to abuse. Foster care can lead to serious neglect, physical abuse, and is an avenue for child trafficking. Without a dedicated, personal, vested interest in a child it is easy for them to get lost. When it's your occupation and not your obligation to care for a child, the outcome can be very different. And statistically speaking children without dedicated mothers and fathers are more likely to end up on the other end of the system, in jail and dependent on failing social programs.
So while I totally agree that in cases of clear cut, provable abuse and neglect there needs to be some form of communal response, some kind of collective care and concern for the wellbeing of children(which are our future!), I think there needs to be some kind of balance betweent that and the individual parent or family. To say that abuse and neglect shoud be allowed to continue because "well, it's her/his/their child and we're never allowed to infringe on their family" is just as folly as saying "the community standards override the individual and you're not allowed to raise your children as you see fit."
There is something dearly precious about one's own children, about raising them in the best way one sees fit(granted that that doesn't include swallowing crackbags!) Read the title of this article to the mother in front of you in line at the grocery store and see how she reacts...
Your utopian(you know that word will never be able to be applied to the real world, right?)village is a wonderful dream and I think we may be able to approximate it on some level some day, and I agree it would be ideal and preferable to the massive and unaccountable communities we live in now(cities). I assume that the word village implies a smaller and more intimate community, one where you can have a real relationship with almost everyone in it. It is impossible to relate to everyone in a city, thus I believe that the bigger a community gets the more important individual rights and sovereignty become. When your community is more like a family it makes more sense to be beholden to it, to them and their standards.
JEEZ this just poured out of me, I hope it makes sense! I appreciate you so much Alexis, you are wise and beautiful and strong and I am glad to know you and commune with you. Please let me know if I missed your point or if I am off base. Thank you for sharing!
I feel so blessed that you decided to engage in this discussion! Thank you.
A lot of this just poured out of me as well, so I tried to put a disclaimer at the beginning that I have compassion for parents, because the way our society has come up around us it makes sense that we must claim "ownership" of children and/or echoing your sentiment of, "To take responsibility for something is like owning it. We hold each other accountable for our actions because we own ourselves." That is something I honor and yet not quite what I'm getting at.
First, when I say "our standards" I should have put it in quotes, (and I am going to edit it to do so). This was directly referring to CPS, who, despite good intentions, often makes really terrible choices and destroys family bonds and confidence. There has also been good to come of it. But overall, we could do better.
In my time involved with the CPS, I witnessed foster parents who genuinely loved and nurtured each child who stepped in their home, and others who took it on as a job and neglect, especially emotional, ensued.
"So who gets to decide what constitutes neglect or abuse?"
How about the children? Are parents who spank taught to talk to their children about how it felt afterward? Are parents listening to their children? When children are raised communally, I feel they have a better chance of having outlets to express themselves to a variety of ears who will listen and confer with other caretakers.
Many parents today are exhausted. Even without children, the machine is sucking plenty of people dry. Working all day just to get by doesn't foster self-care, let alone care for another or multiple other humans. I imagine the communities where the children are cared for by all those capable, spreading out these work/joy loads amongst the many instead of putting it all on a single mother or father, which happens all too often in our current paradigm.
Because we do view children as individually (or jointly) owned, most people take on the attitude that it's "not my child, not my problem" until it's too late and the damage is done. They only feel compelled to support or do anything when they perceive abuse. And often, since they don't know the child or the parent well enough, this is only their perception of witnessing actions out of context.
This isn't the case everywhere...I happen to think we have a pretty tight community that knows how to look out for one another. You are the perfect case and point! Thanks for your support with baby Rayna!! We all feel the ripples~~~ We are heading in a good direction.
I don't need to strive for Utopia, but the village I imagine does a lot better at supporting families and children than most of our current models. As I stated here, "The villages don't have to look like the one in Brett Jones' painting. They can exist anywhere where people are willing to peacefully break down the imaginary walls and borders keeping them from knowing their neighbors, and through developing the relationships that foster the new paradigm of harmonious cocreation and sovereignty for all living creatures." That's what I believe we can do here and now to foster the wellbeing and communal support for youth. "The village" is everywhere we make it.
"So while I totally agree that in cases of clear cut, provable abuse and neglect there needs to be some form of communal response, some kind of collective care and concern for the wellbeing of children(which are our future!), I think there needs to be some kind of balance betweent that and the individual parent or family. To say that abuse and neglect shoud be allowed to continue because "well, it's her/his/their child and we're never allowed to infringe on their family" is just as folly as saying "the community standards override the individual and you're not allowed to raise your children as you see fit.""
This is the crucial paradox that arises because of the way our society functions, and in my opinion because of the children as property perception. I do believe that if humanity came to a place where all youth were viewed as their own sovereign being, and we didn't show preference to our own (a long way off) things would go a lot better for the children overall.
No, I wouldn't say that to a woman in the grocery store, especially without context to the entire piece by Gibran. I understand, and I understand why, most parents even in our tribe would be triggered and upset by me saying this. It doesn't change the vision I see. It's beyond their ego and mine.
I highly recommend reading The Kin of Ata: Are Waiting for You. It is a bit Utopian, but also really accounts for the darkness that can arise as well.
Thanks again Johnny! Let's never stop discussing it all! <3
Beautifully written! Thank you ... I'm so amazed by our community who is so willing to stand for what they believe in... and to discuss the hard things.. and to healthily disagree with each other. And this strikes me as a bit sad... why isn't this the norm for all societies! Big ups right back to you @Johnny and you @Alexis for dropping love bombs and then standing by to make sure they ripple far and wide.