So I’ve been thinking for a while about this subject, and I finally decided to make a post about this some time after I saw a YouTuber say what I put on the title of this post.

Thing is, I’ve noticed that very often young people and especially kids are treated as lesser beings, like if they were not humans beings with problems and lives of their own but just an annoyance that people have to keep up with.

I remember when I was a kid and I wanted to cross a zebra crossing cars would just pass by without stopping more often than not. Now that I’m an adult they stop pretty much every time. I suspect it was because they didn’t want to stop for someone they consider to be lesser than them.

Also, a lot of people seem to think that being a kid means that you just play videogames or whatever all day, but don’t these people remember when they were kids? I sure do. Going to school has been the worst thing I’ve ever had to endure. The only difference with having a job is that you don’t get paid.

  • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    This is great for you to write this. I agree with what you said 100% but just want to say that since it is so long and you must have put a lot of effort into it

    • Red Wizard 🪄@lemmygrad.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      ♥ Thanks for the kind words comrade! Honestly, a lot of this information lives in my head rent-free. As a family with a comfortable dual income, we’re still treading water because of childcare costs. Where we live the age to enter kindergarten has been pushed up (for sound academic and social-emotional reasons) without any measures to ease the burden on working families who understand the objective reality that public education is also a form of free child care and had been budgeting against that reality.

      Being a parent is hard work, and the systems we live under only make it more challenging. This is a perspective I didn’t have until I had kids of my own. If anything, having kids has been the strongest radicalizing force in my life, and is the reason I consider myself a Marxist.

      • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        I am surprised to hear about kindergarten age being raised (being 4 here I think was and is a good age as it helped me learn to read faster as it supplemented what I learned at home) But yeah, I try to read and think about the stuff you said due to wanting to have kids (in the future). Why do say that having kids make you a Marxist? (if you don’t mind answering)

        • Red Wizard 🪄@lemmygrad.ml
          0·
          1 year ago

          Our state was allowing students to enter into kindergarten at age 4 in January as long as they were age 5 by September but that’s now a hard requirement of 5 years old in January. I think every other state does 5 as the minimum. It’s impacting something like 11,000 kids going into the 24 school year, and impacting every daycare center in the state since they only have training and curriculum for students up to age 4.

          As for having kids and Marxism, I will say this: You, as a parent, want to leave your kids in a world better than the one you grew up in. You hope that the struggles you endured are ones they never have to. For a long time, I didn’t know how to build a better future, but through reading Marx and listening to other Marxist thinkers, and understanding that all of the things I enjoy today were built on the backs of the struggles of the past, struggles endured by working-class families who ALSO were looking to leave their children in a better world than they had, the HOW became more clear. Marxism is like a north star, pointing me toward safe harbors, toward a better world not just for me and my kids, but for all of us, and all of our kids. It’s a whole other thing to plan for the future of your kids, you start to look at the world over a longer timeline, and you have to anticipate where things might be and hope that what you’re doing now will offer your kids a springboard into a fulfilling and successful life. Reading Marx and planning for the future came up in parallel to each other, but without Marx, I think that planning would have led to fear and pessimism. Marxism provided me with a framework for which to make those plans, or at least, provide my kids the tools they need to critically navigate the world so that they can be better about planning their own pathways.

          I don’t know that I would have gotten to this place in my world view with out my kids, because they force me to look beyond the horizon I can see and off to the horizon they can see.