Who do children belong to?

Everyone talks about kids, but no one is actually helping them

In Colorado, a mother is in jail for opposing court-ordered reunification therapy between her sons and their father. The father, a former police officer who is accused of rape and sexual assault of his biological and adopted daughters, remains free.

The case is a complicated one. The father made headlines as one of the responders to the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012. But he has been accused of a number of instances of physical and sexual violence, largely by his own children. Some of the accusations predate the Aurora shooting, after which he experienced post-traumatic stress disorder. 

He was also sued for police brutality after a 2015 incident in which he and three other officers assaulted a woman, according to the Denver Post.

The father is now seeking custody of his two youngest boys, who have been ordered to undergo court-ordered reunification therapy.

The therapy is designed to reunite parents with their children and settle custody fights. As described in the Denver Gazette, this therapy uses “confrontation and exercises to deprogram a child’s rejection of a parent. In extreme cases, children have been sent across state lines to reunification camps with parents they reject, and they are barred from having contact with their protective parent.”

In this case, the mother says the children were ordered by the reunification therapist to forgive their father, even as he faces charges of seven felony counts of sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust and a single count of misdemeanor child abuse. 

Parenting is at a particular cultural flashpoint. Recent political and cultural fights have centered on the question of whether there is a moral duty to have children. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has called “childless cat ladies” a drain on society. A growing pro-natalist movement argues that people need to have children to support the economy.

Meanwhile, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy argues that caring for children is causing a crisis of stress among American parents. And after the reversal of Roe and the rollback of reproductive rights, many more Americans are being forced to have children. Legally, these laws serve to make having children a requirement, not a choice. And children, in turn, are being treated as an economic driver rather than human beings who deserve dignity and safety — just look at the weakening of child labor laws.

The question of when a parent’s rights should take precedence over those of a child is a complicated one with no single correct answer. But it is clear that forced reconciliation, and so many of our laws, treat children not as humans, but as property. 

I gave birth to both of my children through hours of blood, vomit, and shit. It was a violent rending, and they spent the first months of their life relying on me for food. My children, then, felt like they weren’t just part of me, but like an extra limb I had grown. Something fully and completely grafted onto me. Their DNA remains part of me, changing me in ways we don’t yet fully understand.

Yet they are not me. They are separate individuals, with their own thoughts and feelings, many of which remain a mystery. Recently I asked my son what he was thinking about and he responded by asking: If a fish swallows enough air, will it be ejected from the sea like when you try to hold a beach ball underneath the water?

I have no idea what their internal lives are like. 

Even as my teen daughter still demands nightly snuggle times, her language and interests have evolved into worlds that surprise, terrify, delight, and baffle me.

My children may have come from me, but they do not belong to me. 

Historically, children — who often died very young — were used as labor. It wasn’t until the late 19th century and the development of modern medicine and vaccines that allowed children to survive past infancy that people began to advocate against child cruelty and labor.

Children are so often the rallying cry for political causes: gun laws, the anti-vaccine movement, book bans, tax credits. Arguments both for and against trans-inclusive health care center on the best interests of the child. Everything in our country is being done in the name of the children, while no one is really helping them.

The tax credits that lifted children out of poverty have not been renewed. As I wrote this, there was news of another shooting at another high school. Thousands of children have gone missing since the 2020 lockdown and have not been found again. In one of the wealthiest nations in the world, we still allow children to go hungry.

Recently, my daughter, while complaining about an authority figure in her life, asked, “How can adults demand respect from kids when they don’t earn it?” When I laughed, she turned to me. “We saw how you all failed in the pandemic,” she said. I wasn’t escaping her ire, and honestly, I didn’t deserve to.

In the New Yorker, Joshua Rothman explores the idea that we should treat our children as strangers. If our relationship with our children isn’t based on proprietary ownership, what, Rothman writes, is “the alternative? What would a family look like if the fundamental separateness of children was taken for granted, even during the years when they depend on us the most?”

Rothman ends the piece, movingly, noting, “Clearly, there are parents who actually feel that their kids are extensions of themselves; they can be seen on the sidelines at soccer games, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair. Even the most well-adjusted parenting, however, contains an element of self-defeat. To be a good parent — arguably, to even become a parent — you need to exercise your power. But that power is always slipping through your fingers, undermined by the unpredictability of life, your children’s resistance and liveliness, and the passage of time.”

We raise children to become the things we hope for ourselves — but ultimately their lives are their choices. And when we create a world and laws that make it hard for them to survive, when we demand their unearned respect more than we demand their safety, we treat them as property rather than the promise they are.

My children are not so little anymore. We watch Brooklyn Nine Nine, and my daughter makes jokes about Hawk Tuah girl. Gone are the days of constant demands for snacks and Elsa braids. 

But as they get older, I realize that the time I have with them isn’t something I am owed, but it’s something I earn by showing them kindness, respect, and guidance, sure, but also humility and apologies. So many apologies for the world we failed to make for them. 

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In 2022, I interviewed historian Gillian Frank about the ways in which “we must help the children” has become a rallying cry for the worse and best of American policies. Paying subscribers can read the interview.