Adultism vs Legitimate Adult Stewardship of Youth
Following up on my pieces “Young People – The World’s Last Chattel?”, and “Looking at the Concept of Adultism”, I continue to try to wrestle with the “meta” level of adult-youth interactions and institutions that are the greater context beyond conventional inside-the-box thinking on “public education” and “parenting”. The question is, what represents a legitimate exercise of stewardship by adults of youth and what crosses the line into adultism, representing a corrupt exercise of adult privilege mis-justified as stewardship?
Time was that in many if not most cultures, women were essentially owned by their husbands and children were owned (particularly the female ones) by their fathers. Even today in some traditional cultures around the world the protocols of women and children as “chattel” still hold the force of tradition or even law. But for the most part
