This is an important conversation, I really appreciate your embrace of nuance in this article.
Cognitive development and wisdom are two related ideas that we've arbitrarily added specific ages to (understandably, because the law is written on paper, but arbitrary anything has issues).
Developmentally, there are a lot of really good reasons we don't teach calculus to tweens, but that doesn't mean we ban discussions of math. It would, in fact, but stupid and counterproductive to do so.
Wisdom is more elusive, but perhaps more relevant: what we do with information based on experience and - often - the patience to know when to act and react (or not) and avoid overreacting.
Kids are rarely wise, but you've rightly pointed out that we've overreacted as a society: We're protecting kids from the information that would actually protect them.
I'd like to add reference here to the work of John Holt, a pioneer of the unschooling and democratic education movements, who believed it was a fundamental human right to decide for ourselves what we shall think about. Here's a couple of Unschooling websites that refer to his work:
tl:dr - learning is a natural human activity. Adults can help facilitate it, but they don't need to direct it. In fact, directing it generally has baleful results (though we are so accustomed to them in our society that we can barely imagine anything different).
Wow. This essay is doing SO much. Feels like the backbone of a book at least. Very thrilling to engage with these ideas; in particular having the Support-Freedom Dichotomy (book title??) articulated is giving my brain a lot of really helpful, really needed leverage for thinking about these topics. Thank you, as always, for your incisive, brawny work!
Thank you for writing about this Devon! I write a lot about child liberation & life outside of the school system, which I think is actually quite a huge part of what controls children. Any conversation about children’s rights needs to include a convo about children’s right to have a say in their education imo. I really love Eloise Rickman’s book It’s not Fair, and the work of Akilah S Richards including her book Raising Free People. While I agree that parents can be a source of power over, I don’t think that the relationships between parent or carer and child can be overwhelmingly positive and supportive if we work to educate parents on the issues around power imbalances & adultism.
The relationship between giving someone financial support, and infantilizing them, also seems to be a thing with marriage, the patriarchy, "tradwives," etc.
In our society, if a person is given money by someone else, that person tends to treat them like they cannot make their own decisions, no matter how much unpaid supportive work they provide.
This is a really fascinating article. I'd never really thought about it but after reading this I realise that society makes so much of a big deal about age. We use it as a threshold for deciding who is invited for medical tests, who has access to funding and support, who sees what adverts, who gets to make what decisions. But age is just a count of the number of years we've been alive, the number of trips we've made around the sun. I turned 40 last year but I am autistic and I have multiple disabilities, and I struggle with executive functioning stuff like making phone calls, managing appointments and anything involving paperwork and emails. I've been known to not respond to emails for weeks because I don't have the energy or headspace to deal with them. I'm very lucky that I live with and am married to someone who supports me with these things while still letting me make my own decisions. I'm constantly terrified of what will happen to me if he dies before I do, I don't have any children or younger relatives so I've no idea who my guardian would end up being if I was judged to not be capable of looking after myself. But at the same time if I was judged to be capable of looking after myself I'd end up with no one to help me with the day to day tasks I struggle with. It's a total mess. I have no idea what the answer is. I wish we really could have communities that supported people with their needs regardless of age.
Wow I just wrote something on a similar vein, deeply informed by your writing on systemic shame as well as Graeber's work, plus my own experiences working in healthcare technology. https://syadvada.com/p/why-cant-they-just-die-already
i agree with all your reasonings here but i’m having trouble understanding your conclusions. maybe i’m just not reading close enough but i don’t see where you addressed adult child sexual relationships here. i admit this is a triggering topic for me so i most likely have some blind spots. i understand the anarchist logic that liberating children would give them the tools to stay away from abusive relationships. but i’m still troubled about what to do with this. what utility does the word child have when you’ve abolished age? who is responsible for the safety of kids in this utopia? i don’t understand what you’ve said about an assigned support person. how would they be any more trust worthy than a child’s parents? if i read this correctly you mention that a legal guardian is necessary for the support of a child or anyone else who needs that support. what does a “legal guardian” mean when we’ve abolished the law?
i know a lot of this is theoretical and not applicable to our current society. and it’s not on you to answer all of these questions! i certainly don’t know the solutions. i just wanted to share what it brought up for me because i have been struggling to make sense of this stuff for a while now.
If you haven't read much about it yet, you might enjoy the writing about supported decision making for individuals with disabilities. In this paradigm that I am suggesting, the child themselves would have the ultimate say over who their support people were -- and would have a great deal more freedom of movement if they were being abused by a parent, educator, guardian, and so on. (This might mean that sometimes a child removes themselves from a relationship for reasons we don't agree with as adults, but I think ultimately would result in greater stability and safety for the kid, even if they did try to break off from relationships multiple times). Children would also have far greater access to information about sexual health and abuse, and be far more likely to recognize abuse when it is happening.
All that I (and many other writers working this sphere) have articulated are ways in which children would be far, far less able to be taken advantage of, because I believe that the major determinant of abuse is a power differential. But this doesn't mean there wouldn't be any predatory adults out there at all! Or that negative experiences might happen. I appreciate you being here for this discussion even while it is a triggering one for you. I would throw this question back to you: how do you think we should, as a society, protect an intellectually disabled adult from being sexually violated while still giving them the freedom to have a consensual sex life of their choosing? And how might we go about figuring out if any given relationship between an intellectually disabled person is safe, consensual, actively wanted by the ID person, and so on? I think a lot of the same dynamic questions are relevant here, and that there are no simple answers that apply to every situation.
I personally think that acknowledging that young people have sex with one another regularly is important, and I think *some* currently illegal arrangements like a 16 year old having sex with a 20 year old might in some specific situations be non-traumatizing, empowering, and not wrong. I also think that when a kid lives in a genuinely supportive community there are a lot of people who can step in when they see something far more troubling happening -- and that a lot of kids get groomed and taken advantage of by far older adults right now because they lack those kinds of communities. Isolation is the other piece that we really have to address, beyond the power differential (though certainly they are linked).
If age is immaterial, what's the difference between grooming and being friends before getting into a relationship? There are more extreme power dynamics that you're in support of (24/7 d/s for example), so why is a power dynamic suddenly bad in this case? Age liberationists always end up either pedo supporters or incoherent. Hot take, a 6 year old and a 40 year old having sex will never be empowering and the ages are a vital part of why it's fucked up. (Or, would you be in support of a severely marginalized 40 year old having sex with a very privileged 6 year old.? I mean the power dynamic isn't that severe, right? Ffs)
Meant to follow up on this because I didn't answer one of your great questions -- what would the role of the concept of the "child" be in an age-abolished world? I think that would have everything to do with a person's culture. Coming-of-age rituals exist across a variety of cultures and typically signify a particular role or task that a person is now mature enough to do. Often they surround puberty and signal physical sexual maturation, but other times things like the capacity to hunt, to participate in dances, read religious texts, or some other activity. I imagine that cultures will always have space for marking the passage of time and the gaining of new status within one's society -- and that it should be fluid and contextual. One may be "of age" in one realm of life or one area of one's culture, and not yet in another.
thank you so much for the thorough and thoughtful reply!!! i’m definitely going to look more into what you mentioned about supported decision making, that sounds like it would really help with my understanding. i truly appreciate you doing this difficult work and being so open to discussions, im so excited to see more people talking about liberation in this context 💕
Thank you so much for the thinking & writing you're doing about anti-child bias and the impacts of ageism on children. We need it & have needed to be doing this reflection for a long while.
I work as a mitigation specialist (life history investigator/story teller) & advocate in the struggle to end extreme sentencing for children in the US. I believe in the liberation of children in childhood and our congruent, playful selves across the lifespan. Would you reconsider your assertion & citation for "really really bad brain science"?
I read the article you linked to and while some of the points he is making are accurate, he's misrepresenting what the science claims and leaving out some major context. Particularly his strong assertion at the start of his article is a misrepresentation of the issue: "Despite its prevalence, there’s no actual data set or specific study that can be invoked or pointed at as the obvious source of the claim that ‘the human brain stops developing at age 25’".
"The brain science" is not claiming that the brain STOPS developing at age 25, the brain science continues to show that the brain has not stopped developing at age 18. The brain science continues to show that the brain structurally and materially continues to grow substantively & importantly between the ages of 18 and 25. The brain science has & will continue to reveal that the brain "develops" & adapts & changes all through the lifespan.
It was immediately alarming to me that all the people who will read this might pick up an impactful misrepresentation that underlies advocacy efforts toward increased agency and liberation of children & young people in a number of areas, but specifically sentencing & clinical risk assessment procedural reform that has been long biased against children.
I agree that further restricting the legal rights of young people is not a good idea. I don't believe that polices based in benevolent contempt as applied to people of any age are ultimately the answer. However, the issue here is not the brain science, the issue is what they are using the brain science to say.
Regarding the use of "the brain science" as applied to sentencing policy specifically: for many decades the US criminal justice system has demonstrated ageism and bias against children. Particularly in the 1990s the speculative "super predator theory" resulted in extreme sentencing for youth, causing incredible disproportionality between the sentences given to adults committing the same crimes. A retraction of empathy for children in one of the most abrupt & systemically abusive ways. The theory of prosecutors and the tough on crime camps was in the same era as the "birth to 3 theory" highlighting the importance of the first three years of life in healthy and "prosocial" child development. They used the theory to say that if a child wasn't adequately cared for in the first years of life their chances at ever being a pro-social child or adult was slim; it was a dog whistle & used to uplift the most extreme sentencing policies for children in the world. The "brain science" establishing claims that the brain is STILL developing past 18 years old and AT LEAST until 25 is being used to liberate people thrown away as children by establishing first and foremost that children are not adults. Children should be treated as children. Children should be treated with deep regard for their developing human selves. That it MATTERS that children have arrived more recently & have less experience those who have been here for several decades. The US Supreme Court has ultimately established – via the brain science showing the continued substantive development of the human brain beyond the age of 18 – that young people have an inherent capacity for rehabilitation and change.
We're coming up on years where we have to fight to hold the line against backsliding, especially in the criminalization of children living in poverty & environmentally set up within the school to prison pipeline – those factors disproportionately impacting Black, brown, & Indigenous children. Would you consider changing the citation on this or otherwise wording this differently?
If I can support with a different citation or clarify this issue further, please let me know. Thanks again for this piece and the work you're doing in the world! Althea
I think that this is a very interesting thing to ponder and as you pointed out—child labor and sexual restrictions being lifted are two major concerns. I think two other things that raise concern are children voting and court sentencing.
I think it goes without saying that Republican parents with 10 kids would have 10 times the voting power, which would be a nightmare. That’s all that can really be said about that.
There are many cases throughout history where children are tried as adults due to the severity of their alleged crimes and this almost always disproportionately affects people of color, specifically black people.
I think abolishing age could be disastrous in this regard, but I am open to the possibility of the fact that something reimagining the concept of age would require a reimagining of legal consequences.
I recommend looking to the many, many different ways that Indigenous societies have structured themselves throughout the millennia, particularly their dynamic understandings of political process and the steps they took to include children and elderly people. Every culture was different of course, and often explored a variety of different political systems over the course of time, but many of them afforded a place for young people to engage in debate and voice their opinions, even while acknowledging they were at a separate stage of life than the adults around them. (The book Dawn of Everything is a truly breathtaking tour of the many different ways that political process has been organized throughout the world, and throughout history, and the immense possibilities that still exist if we were to exercise some imagination).
What I am proposing here is rooted in a pretty radical anarchist & abolitionist politic, and so it requires reimaging a lot of aspects of how society is structured and removing many of the ways in which people are currently restricted and controlled. Take your example of the Republican with the 10 children being dragged to the polls. If we were to abolish age as I have proposed here, those children would not be the property of their parents. They couldn't be forced into doing their parents political bidding anywhere near as easily -- in fact, if those parents were abusive and controlling, the kids would have likely left that family structure long ago. My writing here continues in a long tradition of family abolition authored by anarchist thinkers -- that's abolition of the family as a structure of owning and controlling people, by the way, not the abolition of close, loving relationships that sometimes involve blood or name but should always involve choice.
The one - it's not even a reservation, really, but more of "an issue to be addressed" that I have: It's a problem in the US that information isn't easy to get as a result of paywalls, algorithms, the deluge of unfiltered information, and censorship (by parents and school boards, and - amazingly - the current federal government mandating what can and can't be researched or talked about) for those that currently have the right to vote.
In the case of the ten siblings, how do we make sure that access to information and perspectives gives them a chance to make informed decisions?
It's a great point, Robert, and certainly not exclusive to America. In almost every corner of the planet, information access is restricted by capital as well as the state. I think we can't really have full liberation of children or of anyone without abolishing capitalism -- which is a big, vague goal, so perhaps we can talk about more immediate tactics such as supporting the piracy & archiving of information, disseminating information to marginalized communities as freely as possible, and building internet infrastructure that is not controlled by corporations or by the government. That seems like a crucial place to start.
This analysis is pretty simplistic and potentially dangerous. Because it does not adequately explore the reasons age restrictions exist. Primarily, the vast asymmetry in power, experience, and influence between adults and children. Adult-child relationships are inherently imbalanced: adults have authority and control over environments and narratives. Due to developmental and biological milestones, not socially prescribed ones. These asymmetries are not merely theoretical or social, they shape how easily children can be manipulated, coerced, silenced, especially in sexually exploitative situations.
By glossing over this, your piece risks implying that mutual respect or shared preferences are sufficient to equalize such dynamics, which they are not. A 10-year-old might express a “preference” in a situation shaped entirely by adult authority; interpreting that as equivalent to meaningful agency is ethically dangerous. When the essay addresses how your argument might be misinterpreted, it does so briefly, without unpacking why such interpretations are dangerous or how consent and coercion function under uneven power dynamics.
Lastly, there is no clear line drawn around what protections must remain non-negotiable. Like strict age-of-consent laws or mandatory reporting of abuse, nor does the essay explore how a “needs inventory” would prevent further exploitation in the absence of legal age-based safeguards.
You're trying too hard Devon and need to slow your roll.
I really appreciate how you expand my way of thinking and challenge my assumptions with everything you write. I know this is perhaps an initial exploration (I second the book idea elsewhere on this thread!) but have you thought about whether the "inventory" system you imagine may lend itself to more arbitrary bias and abuse on the part of whoever decides these factors than what we currently have? Age is certainly more complex than we treat it, but I feel like at least it's a somewhat simple proxy--less prone to case-by-case favoritism--for people's ability to keep themselves safe and healthy.
Talking strictly on the child side. Totally with you when it comes to advanced age. Thank you as always for your great thinking.
I have a question about how in this society we would think about a person's ability to make decisions that were good or bad for them. For example, my child will happily eat ice cream for every meal, never brush their teeth and hit people when they get enraged. When I was a young teen I felt intense sexual desire but the sex act I engaged in consensually was traumatising because I was ready for fantasy but not reality. An adults role includes restricting desired objects until a person is deemed capable of making decisions that don't harm them, we understand it as protecting them from themselves. What do you think about this?
These are great questions -- and I have a piece coming up next week that I think will be relevant to some of them. For now I want to ask what you think would have helped you when you were a teen making the sexual decisions that you did. I imagine that an authority figure trying to force you not to have sex would not have helped, and would have only made the act more alluring. What do you think would have helped you think through the decision and see potential consequences to it? And, beyond that, what do you think society's role should be in preventing people from making decisions that harm them? In disability justice we talk about the "right to make mistakes" that is a fundamental part of human dignity. Where do we draw the line between honoring that right to make mistakes, and providing people with support?
As far as ice cream is concerned and the other problems you mentioned with your child, do you think if you're child had access to a caring community they'd be as likely to engage in the behaviors you mentioned? I'm not parent, just a fellow youth liberationist asking a genuine question.
Yeah absolutely, I think that one of the most shocking things I learnt was my child's vulnerability and propensity to violence, it's up to me to teach her to be safe and kind. I guess I've been thinking in terms of risk management, there is a risk to her physical health if I don't restrict her freedom to run across a road or eat a ton of ice cream and not brush her teeth, but there is also a risk of denying her agency and growth by denying her freedom so I guess it's always a juggling act and youth liberation reminds me of what she could lose by not being allowed to learn her own lessons. But without a large caring community with generational knowledge being handed down it's on me and my partner to make those decisions, which is too much power.
Yeah as soon as I posted that I thought about that very question, knowledge and safe relationships with adults would definitely be top of my list of what I'd change about my own experience. I also thought about how family abolition can be difficult for parents if we ask them to map a utopia on to their current lives. It's not a bad thing I have learned so much from sci-fi, but I also as a parent am forced to parent in ways that don't match my most utopian values in order to keep our heads above water. But yeah these challenges are always welcome, they make me reconsider how I parent, and sometimes I think actually I think I'm treading the line between authoritarianism and neglect ok!
Really value your writing and research Devon, thank you.
For those that are interested in this subject Sophie Lewis has an upcoming book about Child Liberation and Madeline Lane-McKinley also has an upcoming book/essay titled Solidarity with Children - https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2610-solidarity-with-children
This interview between Madeline and 15 year old MK Zariel is also excellent - https://thechildanditsenemies.noblogs.org/post/2024/08/08/madeline-lane-mckinley-and-childhood-as-a-concept/
MK also has a substack! https://debatemebro.substack.com/
Aww, thanks for promoting me :3
This is an important conversation, I really appreciate your embrace of nuance in this article.
Cognitive development and wisdom are two related ideas that we've arbitrarily added specific ages to (understandably, because the law is written on paper, but arbitrary anything has issues).
Developmentally, there are a lot of really good reasons we don't teach calculus to tweens, but that doesn't mean we ban discussions of math. It would, in fact, but stupid and counterproductive to do so.
Wisdom is more elusive, but perhaps more relevant: what we do with information based on experience and - often - the patience to know when to act and react (or not) and avoid overreacting.
Kids are rarely wise, but you've rightly pointed out that we've overreacted as a society: We're protecting kids from the information that would actually protect them.
I'd like to add reference here to the work of John Holt, a pioneer of the unschooling and democratic education movements, who believed it was a fundamental human right to decide for ourselves what we shall think about. Here's a couple of Unschooling websites that refer to his work:
https://unschoolingdads.com/the-right-to-control-ones-learning
https://www.johnholtgws.com
And here's a link to the Sudbury Valley school, where you'll find a bunch of essays by founder Daniel Greenberg and others:
https://sudburyvalley.org
tl:dr - learning is a natural human activity. Adults can help facilitate it, but they don't need to direct it. In fact, directing it generally has baleful results (though we are so accustomed to them in our society that we can barely imagine anything different).
Wow. This essay is doing SO much. Feels like the backbone of a book at least. Very thrilling to engage with these ideas; in particular having the Support-Freedom Dichotomy (book title??) articulated is giving my brain a lot of really helpful, really needed leverage for thinking about these topics. Thank you, as always, for your incisive, brawny work!
oh nooooo not another book!!!! just when I'm about to do a mushroom trip again. (Every time I trip, a book just comes out of me).
😆
Thank you for writing about this Devon! I write a lot about child liberation & life outside of the school system, which I think is actually quite a huge part of what controls children. Any conversation about children’s rights needs to include a convo about children’s right to have a say in their education imo. I really love Eloise Rickman’s book It’s not Fair, and the work of Akilah S Richards including her book Raising Free People. While I agree that parents can be a source of power over, I don’t think that the relationships between parent or carer and child can be overwhelmingly positive and supportive if we work to educate parents on the issues around power imbalances & adultism.
The relationship between giving someone financial support, and infantilizing them, also seems to be a thing with marriage, the patriarchy, "tradwives," etc.
In our society, if a person is given money by someone else, that person tends to treat them like they cannot make their own decisions, no matter how much unpaid supportive work they provide.
Absolutely!
This is a really fascinating article. I'd never really thought about it but after reading this I realise that society makes so much of a big deal about age. We use it as a threshold for deciding who is invited for medical tests, who has access to funding and support, who sees what adverts, who gets to make what decisions. But age is just a count of the number of years we've been alive, the number of trips we've made around the sun. I turned 40 last year but I am autistic and I have multiple disabilities, and I struggle with executive functioning stuff like making phone calls, managing appointments and anything involving paperwork and emails. I've been known to not respond to emails for weeks because I don't have the energy or headspace to deal with them. I'm very lucky that I live with and am married to someone who supports me with these things while still letting me make my own decisions. I'm constantly terrified of what will happen to me if he dies before I do, I don't have any children or younger relatives so I've no idea who my guardian would end up being if I was judged to not be capable of looking after myself. But at the same time if I was judged to be capable of looking after myself I'd end up with no one to help me with the day to day tasks I struggle with. It's a total mess. I have no idea what the answer is. I wish we really could have communities that supported people with their needs regardless of age.
This reminds me of brilliant https://stacypulice.substack.com work on centering child rights in the education system. Thank you for the writing!
Wow I just wrote something on a similar vein, deeply informed by your writing on systemic shame as well as Graeber's work, plus my own experiences working in healthcare technology. https://syadvada.com/p/why-cant-they-just-die-already
i agree with all your reasonings here but i’m having trouble understanding your conclusions. maybe i’m just not reading close enough but i don’t see where you addressed adult child sexual relationships here. i admit this is a triggering topic for me so i most likely have some blind spots. i understand the anarchist logic that liberating children would give them the tools to stay away from abusive relationships. but i’m still troubled about what to do with this. what utility does the word child have when you’ve abolished age? who is responsible for the safety of kids in this utopia? i don’t understand what you’ve said about an assigned support person. how would they be any more trust worthy than a child’s parents? if i read this correctly you mention that a legal guardian is necessary for the support of a child or anyone else who needs that support. what does a “legal guardian” mean when we’ve abolished the law?
i know a lot of this is theoretical and not applicable to our current society. and it’s not on you to answer all of these questions! i certainly don’t know the solutions. i just wanted to share what it brought up for me because i have been struggling to make sense of this stuff for a while now.
If you haven't read much about it yet, you might enjoy the writing about supported decision making for individuals with disabilities. In this paradigm that I am suggesting, the child themselves would have the ultimate say over who their support people were -- and would have a great deal more freedom of movement if they were being abused by a parent, educator, guardian, and so on. (This might mean that sometimes a child removes themselves from a relationship for reasons we don't agree with as adults, but I think ultimately would result in greater stability and safety for the kid, even if they did try to break off from relationships multiple times). Children would also have far greater access to information about sexual health and abuse, and be far more likely to recognize abuse when it is happening.
All that I (and many other writers working this sphere) have articulated are ways in which children would be far, far less able to be taken advantage of, because I believe that the major determinant of abuse is a power differential. But this doesn't mean there wouldn't be any predatory adults out there at all! Or that negative experiences might happen. I appreciate you being here for this discussion even while it is a triggering one for you. I would throw this question back to you: how do you think we should, as a society, protect an intellectually disabled adult from being sexually violated while still giving them the freedom to have a consensual sex life of their choosing? And how might we go about figuring out if any given relationship between an intellectually disabled person is safe, consensual, actively wanted by the ID person, and so on? I think a lot of the same dynamic questions are relevant here, and that there are no simple answers that apply to every situation.
I personally think that acknowledging that young people have sex with one another regularly is important, and I think *some* currently illegal arrangements like a 16 year old having sex with a 20 year old might in some specific situations be non-traumatizing, empowering, and not wrong. I also think that when a kid lives in a genuinely supportive community there are a lot of people who can step in when they see something far more troubling happening -- and that a lot of kids get groomed and taken advantage of by far older adults right now because they lack those kinds of communities. Isolation is the other piece that we really have to address, beyond the power differential (though certainly they are linked).
If age is immaterial, what's the difference between grooming and being friends before getting into a relationship? There are more extreme power dynamics that you're in support of (24/7 d/s for example), so why is a power dynamic suddenly bad in this case? Age liberationists always end up either pedo supporters or incoherent. Hot take, a 6 year old and a 40 year old having sex will never be empowering and the ages are a vital part of why it's fucked up. (Or, would you be in support of a severely marginalized 40 year old having sex with a very privileged 6 year old.? I mean the power dynamic isn't that severe, right? Ffs)
Meant to follow up on this because I didn't answer one of your great questions -- what would the role of the concept of the "child" be in an age-abolished world? I think that would have everything to do with a person's culture. Coming-of-age rituals exist across a variety of cultures and typically signify a particular role or task that a person is now mature enough to do. Often they surround puberty and signal physical sexual maturation, but other times things like the capacity to hunt, to participate in dances, read religious texts, or some other activity. I imagine that cultures will always have space for marking the passage of time and the gaining of new status within one's society -- and that it should be fluid and contextual. One may be "of age" in one realm of life or one area of one's culture, and not yet in another.
thank you so much for the thorough and thoughtful reply!!! i’m definitely going to look more into what you mentioned about supported decision making, that sounds like it would really help with my understanding. i truly appreciate you doing this difficult work and being so open to discussions, im so excited to see more people talking about liberation in this context 💕
Thank you so much for the thinking & writing you're doing about anti-child bias and the impacts of ageism on children. We need it & have needed to be doing this reflection for a long while.
I work as a mitigation specialist (life history investigator/story teller) & advocate in the struggle to end extreme sentencing for children in the US. I believe in the liberation of children in childhood and our congruent, playful selves across the lifespan. Would you reconsider your assertion & citation for "really really bad brain science"?
I read the article you linked to and while some of the points he is making are accurate, he's misrepresenting what the science claims and leaving out some major context. Particularly his strong assertion at the start of his article is a misrepresentation of the issue: "Despite its prevalence, there’s no actual data set or specific study that can be invoked or pointed at as the obvious source of the claim that ‘the human brain stops developing at age 25’".
"The brain science" is not claiming that the brain STOPS developing at age 25, the brain science continues to show that the brain has not stopped developing at age 18. The brain science continues to show that the brain structurally and materially continues to grow substantively & importantly between the ages of 18 and 25. The brain science has & will continue to reveal that the brain "develops" & adapts & changes all through the lifespan.
It was immediately alarming to me that all the people who will read this might pick up an impactful misrepresentation that underlies advocacy efforts toward increased agency and liberation of children & young people in a number of areas, but specifically sentencing & clinical risk assessment procedural reform that has been long biased against children.
I agree that further restricting the legal rights of young people is not a good idea. I don't believe that polices based in benevolent contempt as applied to people of any age are ultimately the answer. However, the issue here is not the brain science, the issue is what they are using the brain science to say.
Regarding the use of "the brain science" as applied to sentencing policy specifically: for many decades the US criminal justice system has demonstrated ageism and bias against children. Particularly in the 1990s the speculative "super predator theory" resulted in extreme sentencing for youth, causing incredible disproportionality between the sentences given to adults committing the same crimes. A retraction of empathy for children in one of the most abrupt & systemically abusive ways. The theory of prosecutors and the tough on crime camps was in the same era as the "birth to 3 theory" highlighting the importance of the first three years of life in healthy and "prosocial" child development. They used the theory to say that if a child wasn't adequately cared for in the first years of life their chances at ever being a pro-social child or adult was slim; it was a dog whistle & used to uplift the most extreme sentencing policies for children in the world. The "brain science" establishing claims that the brain is STILL developing past 18 years old and AT LEAST until 25 is being used to liberate people thrown away as children by establishing first and foremost that children are not adults. Children should be treated as children. Children should be treated with deep regard for their developing human selves. That it MATTERS that children have arrived more recently & have less experience those who have been here for several decades. The US Supreme Court has ultimately established – via the brain science showing the continued substantive development of the human brain beyond the age of 18 – that young people have an inherent capacity for rehabilitation and change.
We're coming up on years where we have to fight to hold the line against backsliding, especially in the criminalization of children living in poverty & environmentally set up within the school to prison pipeline – those factors disproportionately impacting Black, brown, & Indigenous children. Would you consider changing the citation on this or otherwise wording this differently?
If I can support with a different citation or clarify this issue further, please let me know. Thanks again for this piece and the work you're doing in the world! Althea
I think that this is a very interesting thing to ponder and as you pointed out—child labor and sexual restrictions being lifted are two major concerns. I think two other things that raise concern are children voting and court sentencing.
I think it goes without saying that Republican parents with 10 kids would have 10 times the voting power, which would be a nightmare. That’s all that can really be said about that.
There are many cases throughout history where children are tried as adults due to the severity of their alleged crimes and this almost always disproportionately affects people of color, specifically black people.
I think abolishing age could be disastrous in this regard, but I am open to the possibility of the fact that something reimagining the concept of age would require a reimagining of legal consequences.
I recommend looking to the many, many different ways that Indigenous societies have structured themselves throughout the millennia, particularly their dynamic understandings of political process and the steps they took to include children and elderly people. Every culture was different of course, and often explored a variety of different political systems over the course of time, but many of them afforded a place for young people to engage in debate and voice their opinions, even while acknowledging they were at a separate stage of life than the adults around them. (The book Dawn of Everything is a truly breathtaking tour of the many different ways that political process has been organized throughout the world, and throughout history, and the immense possibilities that still exist if we were to exercise some imagination).
What I am proposing here is rooted in a pretty radical anarchist & abolitionist politic, and so it requires reimaging a lot of aspects of how society is structured and removing many of the ways in which people are currently restricted and controlled. Take your example of the Republican with the 10 children being dragged to the polls. If we were to abolish age as I have proposed here, those children would not be the property of their parents. They couldn't be forced into doing their parents political bidding anywhere near as easily -- in fact, if those parents were abusive and controlling, the kids would have likely left that family structure long ago. My writing here continues in a long tradition of family abolition authored by anarchist thinkers -- that's abolition of the family as a structure of owning and controlling people, by the way, not the abolition of close, loving relationships that sometimes involve blood or name but should always involve choice.
@Devon thank you so much for your thoughtful response. As always, you are challenging me to think critically and compassionately.
The one - it's not even a reservation, really, but more of "an issue to be addressed" that I have: It's a problem in the US that information isn't easy to get as a result of paywalls, algorithms, the deluge of unfiltered information, and censorship (by parents and school boards, and - amazingly - the current federal government mandating what can and can't be researched or talked about) for those that currently have the right to vote.
In the case of the ten siblings, how do we make sure that access to information and perspectives gives them a chance to make informed decisions?
(That said, I'm all for radical democracy.)
It's a great point, Robert, and certainly not exclusive to America. In almost every corner of the planet, information access is restricted by capital as well as the state. I think we can't really have full liberation of children or of anyone without abolishing capitalism -- which is a big, vague goal, so perhaps we can talk about more immediate tactics such as supporting the piracy & archiving of information, disseminating information to marginalized communities as freely as possible, and building internet infrastructure that is not controlled by corporations or by the government. That seems like a crucial place to start.
This analysis is pretty simplistic and potentially dangerous. Because it does not adequately explore the reasons age restrictions exist. Primarily, the vast asymmetry in power, experience, and influence between adults and children. Adult-child relationships are inherently imbalanced: adults have authority and control over environments and narratives. Due to developmental and biological milestones, not socially prescribed ones. These asymmetries are not merely theoretical or social, they shape how easily children can be manipulated, coerced, silenced, especially in sexually exploitative situations.
By glossing over this, your piece risks implying that mutual respect or shared preferences are sufficient to equalize such dynamics, which they are not. A 10-year-old might express a “preference” in a situation shaped entirely by adult authority; interpreting that as equivalent to meaningful agency is ethically dangerous. When the essay addresses how your argument might be misinterpreted, it does so briefly, without unpacking why such interpretations are dangerous or how consent and coercion function under uneven power dynamics.
Lastly, there is no clear line drawn around what protections must remain non-negotiable. Like strict age-of-consent laws or mandatory reporting of abuse, nor does the essay explore how a “needs inventory” would prevent further exploitation in the absence of legal age-based safeguards.
You're trying too hard Devon and need to slow your roll.
Peace
Molly
I really appreciate how you expand my way of thinking and challenge my assumptions with everything you write. I know this is perhaps an initial exploration (I second the book idea elsewhere on this thread!) but have you thought about whether the "inventory" system you imagine may lend itself to more arbitrary bias and abuse on the part of whoever decides these factors than what we currently have? Age is certainly more complex than we treat it, but I feel like at least it's a somewhat simple proxy--less prone to case-by-case favoritism--for people's ability to keep themselves safe and healthy.
Talking strictly on the child side. Totally with you when it comes to advanced age. Thank you as always for your great thinking.
I have a question about how in this society we would think about a person's ability to make decisions that were good or bad for them. For example, my child will happily eat ice cream for every meal, never brush their teeth and hit people when they get enraged. When I was a young teen I felt intense sexual desire but the sex act I engaged in consensually was traumatising because I was ready for fantasy but not reality. An adults role includes restricting desired objects until a person is deemed capable of making decisions that don't harm them, we understand it as protecting them from themselves. What do you think about this?
These are great questions -- and I have a piece coming up next week that I think will be relevant to some of them. For now I want to ask what you think would have helped you when you were a teen making the sexual decisions that you did. I imagine that an authority figure trying to force you not to have sex would not have helped, and would have only made the act more alluring. What do you think would have helped you think through the decision and see potential consequences to it? And, beyond that, what do you think society's role should be in preventing people from making decisions that harm them? In disability justice we talk about the "right to make mistakes" that is a fundamental part of human dignity. Where do we draw the line between honoring that right to make mistakes, and providing people with support?
As far as ice cream is concerned and the other problems you mentioned with your child, do you think if you're child had access to a caring community they'd be as likely to engage in the behaviors you mentioned? I'm not parent, just a fellow youth liberationist asking a genuine question.
Yeah absolutely, I think that one of the most shocking things I learnt was my child's vulnerability and propensity to violence, it's up to me to teach her to be safe and kind. I guess I've been thinking in terms of risk management, there is a risk to her physical health if I don't restrict her freedom to run across a road or eat a ton of ice cream and not brush her teeth, but there is also a risk of denying her agency and growth by denying her freedom so I guess it's always a juggling act and youth liberation reminds me of what she could lose by not being allowed to learn her own lessons. But without a large caring community with generational knowledge being handed down it's on me and my partner to make those decisions, which is too much power.
Yeah as soon as I posted that I thought about that very question, knowledge and safe relationships with adults would definitely be top of my list of what I'd change about my own experience. I also thought about how family abolition can be difficult for parents if we ask them to map a utopia on to their current lives. It's not a bad thing I have learned so much from sci-fi, but I also as a parent am forced to parent in ways that don't match my most utopian values in order to keep our heads above water. But yeah these challenges are always welcome, they make me reconsider how I parent, and sometimes I think actually I think I'm treading the line between authoritarianism and neglect ok!