If you are a parent or guardian who finds themselves saying things like, “I don’t have to accept anything my child believes, I am their parent.”, you might want to check yourself.
Ask yourself, am I a slave owner? Am I a slave master? Or do I see my child as a human being who has individual autonomy and the ability to self-determine who they are?
Do you see them as property? Do you see them as something to own, something to possess, something that you can make in your image?
This is showing you that you are uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with yourself, uncomfortable with the idea that somebody else could actually sit in their sense of self and do so bravely in a world that tells us to mold and shape ourselves into something that does not work.
So in your inability to see the humanity in your child, you are not seeing your humanity. You’re acting out and being the oppressor’s tool.
You are not a parent. You are a wanna-be slave owner.
Recommended Reading: They Were Her Property: White Women As Slave Owners in the American South by Sstephanie E. Jone-Rogers
