We Got Here Because American Society Treats Children Like Property
There are widespread cultural and structural impacts that affect everyone when children are seen as pets and commodities, not developing human beings.
As America continues its descent into autocracy, people all over the political spectrum question how we got here.
I’m going to repeat what child abuse survivors have been saying for years: while there’s numerous forces that led to the crumbling of this shambles of democracy, a major underpinning is that America is not a society where children are seen as small human beings who are the future. They’re seen as property and pets.
The evangelicals simply see them as a tool for their holy war, secular individualistic Americans see them as an expensive pet to brag about. While I did not have a conservative or evangelical upbringing, I have a common thread with many people who did: we recognize that our parents abused us because we were like defective merchandise that didn’t do what the ads told them.
Pets that didn’t do the tricks they wanted, so they yelled, screamed, hit, cried to the world about what burdens we were, and then wondered why we cut them off as adults or didn’t give fuck when they died.
