Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy

by Madeline Lane-McKinley

A revolutionary feminist case for child liberation, a utopian project that helps us imagine ways to build insurgent, collective forms of care. 



We live in a world that is profoundly against children—evident in the genocide in Palestine, the fascist targeting of trans children, and the blatant disregard for the lives of migrant children crossing borders and oceans. It is a world in which climate catastrophe has become the new normal, in which children’s futures are by no means assured.



What we need, feminist writer and scholar Madeline Lane-McKinely argues, is a politics of solidarity with children, one that sees children as comrades in our struggle for a better future. Blending personal and political reflection with cultural analysis, Lane-McKinley examines the history of childhood as a system of private property in capitalism, showing how the idea of the child has been weaponized in the service of white supremacy and empire. She disentangles motherhood from the act of caregiving, tracing the possibilities of revolutionary mothering. And she critiques the parents’ rights movement and imagines what education might look like outside schools, considering how we might center children as we challenge the strictures of the nuclear family. 



Elegantly written and provocative, Solidarity with Children is a book for anyone who cares about children and the struggle for a better world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Politics, Essays, Parenting, Theory, Philosophy

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2025

Reviews

[Sunny Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 solid primer on a lot of ideas I’m familiar with, part lit review part manifesto part memoir in typical haymarketverso slop fashion but not like painfully annoying to read

[Nichole · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ 45%

I really wanted to love this book. It starts with a really strong foreword that made me excited for the theory and contents in the book and touched on a lot of subjects/intersectionalities that I am interested in. I also am really keen to read more on the concept of childhood liberation, especially as a mother and someone that had a traumatizing childhood because of the adults around me.

After the foreword the book really fell flat for me. It was not engaging and I wonder if the book was longer could it have been a more engaging book? There is a lot of foundation to lay to understand the concepts of child and motherhood along with the concept of the nuclear family and where tf this all started, and the author tries to cover in all too quickly. This makes the text really hard to follow. I feel as if we were chasing one quote into the next jumping from many sources like storytellers, phycologists, academics, Black feminists, etc. I would have loved to have more insight from the author into what conclusions they’re coming to but I often felt that I was at a loss with what they were trying to say as there wasn’t much personal dialogue between these sources.

Additionally this is very western focused lacking [up to 45%] Indigenous theory, practices of communal living around the world which is common in places around the world, especially the global south, and just anything that wasn’t eurocentric. Yes there was a lot of Black feminists quoted, but again these were still people living in the west. There are concepts of child autonomy, child/motherhood that should have been explored even in the foundation laying of this.

I also feel the ick when I read of white people using the word utopia and the concept of a utopia especially when they are heavily sharing eurocentric sources.

Finally it felt kind of funny reading a book that was pushing childhood liberation/adults being in solidarity with children and then not including [up to 45%] children in the book. No quotes from children, no discussion with children. This is another book about children written by an adult. Idk it was a bit ironic.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an earc of this book.

[rie · Rating 3 out of 5]

with the exposure of the epstein files i’m seeing more and more left leaning people having discussions about children as an oppressed class, the most oppressed class, i would say. so it good to have books like these to steer people to. unfortunately i just don’t think this book hits what i would’ve liked. the section on motherhood is particularly disappointing. i would’ve hoped to have more analysis on how children are private property of parents, how this is a breeding ground for child abuse from said parents and family members, how mothers often use children as the only way to assert power over something in this world, etc etc. these things were given maybe brief thoughts too but nothing of any serious substance. this can be said about a lot of the book. lots of ideas but not much is done with them aside from quoting other people and maybe a brief question to the audience. i don’t expect the author to have all the answers but sometimes it feels like the most important analysis is given the least amount of time. and as many have said, there is that irony of despite this being about working with children, there are barely any children quoted and cited at all in the book.

[Madeleine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Interesting read. The author cites other interesting books that I want to look into more.
The four main chapters all had parts that made me think, or new things that I learned, but I missed a bit of structure inside of each chapter. There was a lot of jumping from one thing to the next, and it was honestly a bit confusing. It's part history and analysis, part personal episodes and manifesto.

[Miri · Rating 2 out of 5]

excellent discussion about this book, what it missed, and what we envision to be 'good' parenting that centers child consent and autonomy while balancing what children should be taking away to become active social beings in lesbian feminist book club today!

i had high hopes for this book because i haven't engaged with much work focused on children, and rather most of the marxist feminist (which this book was not) literature I've engaged with before has focused on the family unit/structure as a whole or been more about motherhood and women's liberation from the family. however, this book was a really major let down for me as none of the ideas espoused here seemed novel to me. in fact, i kind of found this book to be an affront to anyone who has ever read any of the texts referenced throughout. like honestly just go read sophie lewis or silvia federici instead.

none of the ideas or theories here identified a 'gap' in the literature and filled said gap in any sort of effective manner. if there was anything that seemed somewhat novel, it was touched on for maybe a sentence and never expanded upon. the book did a very poor job of balancing the lit review-y elements and personal anecdotes, which i felt did not really strengthen the book. in fact, i would argue that including so much personal anecdotal evidence as a parent when the book is allegedly about centering children contradicts the author's point.

i think that a <200 page book is not long enough to explain something that is fairly underwritten about. the book length and catchy title push it into the category of "haymarket/verso slop" that is an affront to adult literacy.

[Sarah]

A thoughtfully written essay that challenged my own anxieties and ideas. I don’t agree with everything explored or proposed, but it’s certainly a worthwhile read.

[Gee Rothvoss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting essay that reviews not only the ways in which ageist dynamics neglect to take children into consideration, but also what we have traditionally defined childhood as and the purpose that our different conceptualisations of it have served. Something that I found to be really interesting was the whole preface, since it examines the current state of the world through the lens of how children are not only affected, but also instrumentalised as a means to adult ends. While I did find it hard at times to stay engaged with the essay, mostly due to the fact that several paragraphs were not cognitively accessible and could've used some editing for the sake of clarity - I would recommend giving this a read to anyone interested in becoming aware of the ageist biases we as a society have, and the ways in which we can challenge them.

[Bethany]

This book was not what I expected, but it made me think more deeply about ideas/concepts I take for granted. Lane-McKinley explains her book doesn’t provide answers but she hopes it helps with the grappling. I had to keep reminding myself as i read, especially when encountering ideas that are more “extreme,” that this book is not meant to be a blueprint or directive. As Lane-McKinley accounts, we move forward through experimentation, failure, and dreaming/imagining. Asking questions and grappling.
The parts that have stuck with me the most explore utopia and the tension of the now and not-yet.
Thanks for an interesting read!!

[R-T · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in a youthlib club in high school but we didn’t read any theory, in fact, we did nothing at all. We just hung out in a google meet after school. It’s too bad though, because these were the ideas I was desperate for at 15, when my endless attempts to save my friends from their violent families had left me in a state of complete resignation. It became more than clear to me that nobody could save a child from being abused, certainly not another child, because every law and structure in place was created with the intent of protecting a parent’s right to torture, humiliate, and imprison their children. We live in a world where a child can be married off to an adult, male, blood relative, but is forbidden from and punished for engaging in a relationship with a same-aged, same-sex partner. The only way to protect children is to give them, as Lane-McKinley suggests, “full political, economic, and sexual rights” (p117).

This essay also answers the age-old question of “How will communism be good for women?”: By abolishing The Family. When children are no longer private property, there will no longer be the oppressive role of “mother”, nor “wife”. Women and girls will no longer be coerced into performing motherhood, into pouring their lives into the unpaid labor of caring for children, and by association, men (Elizabeth Gilbert, “A Brief History of Womanly Overgiving”).

As an introduction, I couldn’t have asked for a more complete overview of child liberation framework. Solidarity will always be the way forward. Affording no autonomy to children (particularly gay and trans children, impoverished children, abused children, racialized children, disabled children…) is willingly killing them, because even if they survive long enough to escape into “adulthood”, the dehumanization doesn’t stop. The “child” is just a person.

[Joseph Mazzola · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an absolutely amazing read. Solidarity With Children is excellently researched, and I wish I had this book and its bibliography while I was writing about youth liberation in undergrad.
It brings together the best parts of Marxist thought (a lucid analysis of labor, property, and political economy) and anarchist thought (radical critique and questioning of power relations on every level imageinable, utopian theorizing), and births a powerful, startling, and wide-eyed piece of work. I devoured it.

[vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

quite a cursory text (seeing lots of people call this "haymarket verso slop" lmao, not a familiar category with me but probably comparable to australia's "in the national interest" series, as there is really only so much a <200 page book can explore on a heavy topic regarding children across the world, and throughout history).

the argument is constructed mostly between personal recollections and recounting other peoples' lives and writings, both of which leave less space to discuss all the implications, but altogether still a vital piece of support for children's rights and autonomy. i've felt felt strongly about this topic for quite a while but have never dipped into the literature until now, so i really appreciated the verbalisation of concepts i've previously only really naïvely conceptualised—the construction of childhood by adults, the assertion of children as property, the dismissal of youth activism as utopian because it demands a world systemically opposed to our own...etc. loved the le guin glaze. "listen, listen, listen" indeed.

such a broad experience as childhood calls for wide and diverse perspectives, so it's only natural that this book fell short in that respect, but i do appreciate what it was able to touch on. in particular i found the discussion of trans children revealing—as they are most vulnerable to a system of adult supremacy because they actualise their own adolescent autonomy, and subvert the conservative vision of children as a blank slate. it is such glaringly persistent irony (not nearly a strong enough word, as lane-mckinley notes) that adults assert this fiction of "protecting childhood" whilst enabling harm (up to one billion children, but i do hope the more people talk/write/read of this topic, the more we might someday realise that naïve, childish, immature reality of children actually having rights.

[Kuu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

In "Solidarity with Children", Lane-McKinley discusses, in essay format and without any definitive answers or even clear suggestions, what TRUE solidarity with children could look like, and what we might be able to do to reach this state of solidarity. Drawing on both her own experiences as well as a wide range of previously published literature and fiction analysis (both movies and novels), she shows some of the ways in which children are a repressed class in our society, and the ideas other people - adults and children both - have had about how to potentially remedy this state, at least partially.

What I appreciated was that she did not merely focus on white, middle-class children, and instead problematised that a lot of the time, these are the only children considered when it comes to talking about children's innocence and how they need to be protected. Lane-McKinley mentions the way in which Black children or, most recently, trans children and Palestinian, are excluded from the group of "children" worthy of protection, how instead, they are "un-children".

She mentioned lots of other authors, all of which I now want to read; this might be a criticism I have with this book, which is that it draws heavily on the work of others, and sometimes it felt a little difficult to fully grasp her arguments as I was not familiar with these previous works. Still, this was a very good read, giving me lots of things to think about.

4.5/5 because of the aforementioned issue

[Lulu Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This manifesto did what a manifesto must do: re-ignite that utopian impulse in me.

I suppose, like with many manifestos, I am left so wanting. Lane-McKinley is at her best describing this dream/nightmare of childhood and how (abstractly) we can think through its antimonies. But her scattered focus, mostly on literature and many anecdotes means many of the problems of child lib are unaddressed, and this means the speculative turn here is ultimately pretty foggy, even for speculative philosophy.

I wanted a sharper focused on the contradictions within aforementioned institutions of family, school, etc and attempts at reform.

One thought I had while reading was the predominance of liberal “youth empowerment” as child lib has stalled on the left (as has the left as a whole). How do we forge a child lib that does not end up as “leadership” camps for bourgeois children?

[Sam Regan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd give this 4.5 stars. I especially liked the ways that this book was both a heady theory book about feminism and capitalism and was also intimate and personal and made room for the author's voice to shine through. I found myself feeling like I could share this book with people in my life who don't generally read anti-capitalist theory, and that it would potentially feel accessible and friendly to them.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

i picked this book up last month as i gear up to graduate & become a secondary school social studies teacher. i wanted to learn how to better show up for my students and encourage their growth as learners and people beyond schoolhouse walls. overall, i found many parts of this book illuminating to this end — particularly the sections on being an accomplice to my students’ demands for autonomy and the democratization of education and schools. encouraging students and young people to meaningfully reflect & debrief lessons from school, encouraging them to organize, and show up for others is also something i found useful.

however, the reasons im not giving it a super high rating are as follows:

i found a lot of the language in this book to be super abstract in a way that created confusion & frustration within me. namely, i wish the ideas of building systems of collective care or communal parenting had been better defined, rather than beginning & ending there with the flowery statement. i got a somewhat better understanding when the context of encampments were brought up but i still think if i were asked to describe those concepts as they are in this essay, i would be without words.

The Trouble with School was… okay. Yes, i have a lot of criticisms of the school system as someone who grew up as a child in a red state under constant threat of gun violence, outing, and oppressed by curriculums that have become glorified right wing propaganda. however, this section suffers from the previous issue of abstracting key points + contradiction. in this section addressing COVID, Lane-McKinley goes on against narratives of children “falling behind” as wrong or exclusionary of the things children *did* learn in the pandemic, such as, emotional lessons & lessons about systemic failure. HOWEVER, she also goes on to acknowledge learning loss and how the educational crisis was exacerbated by the pandemic, without defining what that means necessarily or how it relates to the prior point. i agree, the educational system has been in crisis for a long time and the pandemic exacerbated the conditions of this crisis greatly—literacy rates are falling, critical thinking generally goes un-taught, and many children lost out on 2 critical years of socialization. i witnessed this even in my own teaching experiences. i also agree that this is not solved by giving kids more work, but by being intentional with student-centered learning techniques & lessons in the classroom that teach literacy. i dont agree that acknowledgment of this undermines other knowledge students may have gained in the pandemic, as a matter of fact, that knowledge can be used to strengthen the lessons in the classroom.

On the democratization of education: “…but instead ‘by making the world, so far as we can, accessible to them.” what does this mean? unlimited access to the internet? public libraries? how will children decide what to learn? i dont tend to love arguments that frame compulsory learning/schooling as authoritarian because i think they misplace blame. schooling, as it is currently designed, shuts down the imaginations of students and makes thinking/learning in a particular way compulsory rather than encouraging critical/independent thinking. i dont think this happens because school is compulsory, i think it happens because our educational system sucks and was designed to reinforce capitalist oppression

Overall, I think this book makes a good argument for the democratization of schools and the inclusion (and leadership) of children in that process. Youth and teachers should have as much input over the curriculum as random administrators do. seeing young people at SFSU make demands and negotiate with their administration against austerity, for weapons divestment, and more i think sets an inspiring example for how these things can take shape for the long haul — beyond encampments or singular autonomous actions.

[Oz · Rating 4 out of 5]

An essay I wholeheartedly agree with, it's just at times overly linguistic. I appreciate that the author states in the introduction that this is just one essay, and intended more to get people thinking than to solve the problems it lays out, but being fairly surface level and language-focussed at times gets a bit irritating. I enjoy her film and literature analysis, as a film and literature student, but I think the extend to which they matter is perhaps given too much weight. Still, the focus on intersectionality was eye-opening for me - before I started this I hadn't really considered problems children face due to compounding marginalisations to be Children's Rights Issues, so was initially surprised by the focus on children killed in global conflict generally, and in Gaza specifically, plus Black children murdered in the US - but it made more sense the more I thought. Good primer on the topic for people new to children's liberation, especially those who care more about language used.

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I actually took mildly related class in school and there’s so much to say about how the world we live in oppresses children, and I felt this essay did not take us there. And I didn’t feel like any of the ideas in the book were new to me

[Zoë Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas, but doesn’t feel like it really dives into the complexities of child liberation. It talks around the idea but fell short for me.

[Raven McKnight · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading this, but I need to sit with it a little longer before I know my full thoughts. Really engaging and exciting points throughout, but I agree with other reviewers that it's a little one-sided/eurocentric in ways, and it does seem odd that there are no children's voices included! But, at the same time, it says right in the title that it's an essay and not a full treatise/manifesto/whatever, so holding it to those standards feels a little unrealistic. definitely definitely want to read more about child liberation ideas!!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly what I was hoping for but still worth reading. Wanted something maybe a little more psychoanalytic but honestly I probably just need to read Shulamith Firestone + a woke parenting book. This book was very well-cited and I think the best value it holds is actually in directing the reader to other texts that touch more on their specific interests.

Ch. 2 - On the Possibility of Mothering was a bit too theory-brained for me. Not the author's fault. Again, I should probably just read The Dialectic of Sex already.

As I anticipated, Ch. 3 - The Problem With School was a bit dicey. Lane-McKinley critiques homeschooling while praising "unschooling", failing to recognize that unschooling poses the same problems for children without even the redeeming factors of them at least learning reading, writing and arithmetic. She eventually settles on "deschooling" which I guess is fine. She finishes this chapter by discussing the violent suppression of the 2024 Gaza solidarity encampments on college and university campuses, which struck me as a bit odd considering college and university students are not children. Then again, as she writes later in the book, sometimes what is considered a "child" is just anybody to the political left of you. This chapter would have been a good opportunity to expand on that - why do we always call them college kids, anyway?

I very much enjoyed Lane-McKinley's writing on friendship and utopianism in the final chapter of the book, Child Liberation: A Utopian Problem. This chapter included examples of autonomous organizing by children and adolescents, including the Peruvian movement of working children in 1976. I would have loved for the bulk of the book to be about youth organizing but ultimately this is an essay and not a history so can't fault it for that.

I can probably get this out of other texts that Lane-McKinley references, but I would have liked to read more about forging solidarity with children on the basis that 1) this is strongly connected to the fight for women's autonomy as women even as adults are often infantilized to justify their subordination to men, and 2) many children are also workers. She ultimately makes the very obvious but salient point that we have no choice but to be in solidarity with children for the simple fact that they did not ask to be born; none of us did.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nonfiction scoring considerations (out of 5):
Readability: 3
Organization: 3
Depth of analysis: 4
Personal enjoyment: 2
Existential crisis causation level: 2 (low)

My reaction to this book changed frequently. At first, I found the structure to be hard to follow. I was slogging through, rereading parts over and over, wishing for some subheadings and straightforward thesis statements. Part of my issue with the organization and clarity was the author's use of quotes. There were sometimes too many quotes in a sentence or paragraph, grouped together in ways that weren't very smooth grammatically, and it was hard to follow. Sometimes it seemed like the author was using a quote to make a main point instead of writing her own thesis statement. I did really appreciate Lane-McKinley's analysis of movies and popular novels to reveal societal views of children and the nuanced discussion of "motherhood" as a rigid societal role vs. "mothering" as a care practice.

About halfway through, something clicked and I started to enjoy the loose flow of ideas. It reminded me of a deep conversation with a friend when the conversation meanders because of the ways ideas spark others. I also grew to disagree with my own demand for a more structured argument. As Lane-McKinley points out, the adult vs. child hierarchy is essentially unchallenged in society. Most people are not going to be ready for a step by step delineation of a political goal or policy plan before they've reconsidered this basic assumption. Her essay does its intended job of planting a seed, sparking the imagination of the reader to consider new liberatory possibilities.

Overall, I still felt that the author could have done more exploration of the conditions of children as an oppressed group, maybe through data or changes through history. It felt like the historical portion focused more on childhood/children as a concept instead of their lived experiences through time. Solidarity with children requires knowing the oppression they face, and while various experiences of this oppression were discussed, it felt like an incomplete analysis. I think an exploration of this concept on a global scale, rather than mainly focused on the West, would have elevated the text as well.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Haymarket Books for the eARC, which I unfortunately did not finish before publication. This book was published on November 4.

[Christian M]

DNF —

This was way too bogged down with quotes and random ideas. None of which were really driven down into enough.

I liked the ideas I read but this read like a rough draft of a masters thesis - throw it all at the page and see what my advisor likes.

Also… where were the children in this?

[Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be published in the US by Haymarket on November 4th, 2025.

“Sharing secrets is how so many of us survive childhood, if we can. Because children listen to each other. This is one of the most common practices of collective care that children create together. If we are to learn about solidarity with children, it must begin with listening, and believing.”

I read this book aloud to my girlfriend, Lanelle, while we drove up and down the English countryside on our way to and from Scotland—a kind of moving classroom where Lane-McKinley’s words mingled with the gray skies and winding roads. I didn’t take notes, so this review may be less detailed than my usual ones, but the impact of the book stayed with me. As someone who both survived an abusive childhood and feels deeply committed to child liberation, Solidarity With Children struck a nerve and opened my heart.

Madeline Lane-McKinley names what so many of us know intimately: children are too often treated as property, their autonomy denied, their humanity diminished. The book insists that children are not “less than” or “not yet”—but full, complicated people whose ways of knowing, dreaming, and caring should be taken seriously. I was especially moved by the line where Lane-McKinley refers not to “my child” but to “the child I am responsible for caring for.” That subtle shift reframes parenthood and caregiving as responsibility and relation, not ownership. Children belong to no one but themselves.

For readers who, like me, are invested in critiques of the nuclear family and the fight for family abolition, this book is in conversation with M.E. O’Brien’s Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care (a text I practically treat as scripture). Both works push us to imagine collective forms of care beyond the privatized, hierarchical structures we inherit. Lane-McKinley writes lyrically, with the cadence of poetry braided into sharp political critique. The rhythm of her prose is intimate, urgent, and often radical in its simplicity—reminding us that to listen to children, to take them seriously, is already a revolutionary act.

I admit I sometimes wished the book pushed further conceptually; the latter chapters turned more historical than I personally craved. Still, I learned so much, and it gave me new language for something I’ve always felt but rarely seen articulated: adult supremacy is a foundational form of domination that upholds capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism. To dismantle it is to fight for all our liberation. This slim but mighty book has earned its place on my shelf as another crucial companion in the fight to end family violence and build worlds where children can simply be—learning, playing, becoming human, in freedom.

📖 Read this if you love: abolitionist thought, radical critiques of the nuclear family, and works like Family Abolition by M.E. O’Brien or Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis.

🔑 Key Themes: Child Liberation and Autonomy, Collective Care Beyond the Nuclear Family, Adult Supremacy as Domination, Dreaming and Play as Radical Knowledge.

[Kami · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buddy read, 3.5 stars. This book wasn't life changing for me, but it will be for someone. I was already familiar with the concept of youth liberation prior to reading this, and I think this text's primary function is to serve as an introduction, which is okay. This text can be especially useful for people who already have an understanding that children are marginalized, but don't have the language to express that. And I think the text can help adults, its primary audience, reflect more deeply on their interactions with children, which is vital and something you should be doing constantly, especially if you are in frequent contact with them as a parent, or an educator, or whoever.

The ways in which adult marginalize children and exert their power over them can even show up when children are not present. My cousin recently broke up with her boyfriend, and one of the inciting incidents was an argument they had about his control over their shared space. He told her, "This is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship!" And it hurt her deeply. She tried to explain this to him, but he rebuffed her, telling her it was not problematic of him to address her that way; "Haven't you heard a parent say that to a child, or a teacher say that to a student?" he said. She told him she wasn't a child, she was his partner, and they were equals—and of course she was right. But isn't interesting how the language of adult authority shows up in something as mundane as an argument between adult partners? And how even that interaction, then, was evocative of something they had both experienced in childhood, was adult dominion over them, to minimize them? And how this control, this need for it and lack of it, was an echo of the control they had as a child? All this is to say: even if you do not have children in your life you care for, or you do not care for children as a whole, we were all children once. And we have all felt the boot of an adult on our back, and been powerless.

For all this philosophizing, a three star rating still is indicative of a lack, or a lack of satisfaction I have with the text. The text meanders; more than once I have wanted the author to return to the point. (This review meanders, too, but this review isn't under scrutiny.) And the solutions it offers are not concrete, to the extent that if I were uncharitable, I would say the text does little more than posturing and theorizing. In the final chapter, the text offers tepid solutions, and then falls back to say, I do not have solutions. And I want to say, tentatively, that this is a shortcoming of many leftist texts, to conclude on a hopeful note with solutions that are insubstantial for the scope of the problem. On one hand, if you can make a difference in a child's life, even for a moment, that is significant; the poem "Throwing Children" by Ross Gay captures this well. On the other hand, though...on the other hand...how does this address the structural forces that continue to marginalize children, that strip them of their autonomy, and leave them at the whim of the adults around them?

Children are so unsafe that it frightens me. I think I would need more than these 200 pages to convey how frightening it really is.

[TheCalloftheLibrary · Rating 3 out of 5]

more of a 2.5 but star ratings are silly anyway. conceptually in alignment with much of the text but often felt at a distance from lane-mckinley's broad theorization, and that ultimately it would struggle to show someone unacquainted with children's liberation a real way in.

to me, the most consequential works relating to child liberation have not been observations about care or motherhood (which figures into much of the essay), but incidental works which interrogate the colonial utilization of the child within Western humanism. i think of sylvia wynter after everything i read these days but her interrogation of "Man" in attempting to unsettle it magnifies instances wherein colonialism compares the people empire subjugates to "pre-developmental" stages of civilization, ie in parallel with child to parent, youth to man. this same idea reappears in many histories/discussions about settler-colonial rhetoric, expanded with contexts regarding the ideological conceptualization of the child/childhood from the roman patriarch to educational debates about best possible practice for "civilizing" the wild adolescent. lane-mckinley does interact with the latter thread in the chapter on schooling... but the unwillingness to follow the path of residential schools and Rousseau past the institution and meaningfully introduce the reader to this pre-established theoretical work which would further unmask the "making" of the child was disappointing. i know its silly to think a work is lesser because it didn't follow the argument you would, but the patchwork approach taken here seems ill-equipped to actually change minds or present a well-explained conclusion in clarified terms. instead, this is simultaneously abstracted to the necessity of imagining the unimaginable (which i agree with! but perhaps not as the primary take-home message of a manifesto), or much too fixated on what child liberation will affect. the musings are much more contemporary and personal than i was expecting, plus, its preoccupations are less with the history/idea of childhood (which i think is the site most likely to get people to think differently about this topic) and much more about the places reckoning with the family will lead- ie that motherhood, school, politics are sites of control which need the re-imagining. this ends up lacking focus; even sophie lewis' family abolition, which was messy in its attempt to chronical a kind of loose history of family abolition as a concept, builds a narrative of thought which aligns lewis' musing with a long tradition of marxist analysis of the family. lane-mckinley, though ideologically kindred with lewis (and even quotes her), feels unmoored by comparison, lost in literary theory or the thesis statements of other feminists.

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for a thoughtful exploration of the many unspoken ways children are oppressed by adults/the adult-favoring status quo and social/legal systems, and interesting ideas of ways to change this personally and systemically. Instead, it just felt like the author opinionating on as many recent political talking points as possible (like the Gaza campus movements - not irrelevant, but not very relevant) and finding ways to tie children's rights into them. The large section on motherhood also seemed... not completely unrelated, but just... not what I was looking for in this book.

And while I am certainly liberal myself, I don't like the author's assumption that all readers are as radically liberal as she is/ she treats her opinions as fact in a way that undermines her credibility, and alienates moderate readers who could also get behind child liberation.

And as others have said, ironic that she included no/very few direct quotes or conversations with actual children. She says she's writing *with* rather than *for* children, but she's opinionating on what's best for children in the same way (albeit from a very different perspective) as the people she critiques. She talks a whole lot about Z and the way she's raising them, but never lets Z or any other kid speak for themselves.

[Lincoln Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

Due to my aversion to children, I did not expect to, but I really enjoyed this book. It is a book that I will think about frequently, I feel. It has caused me to re-think my opinions on children and many other aspects of modern life.

This book certainly leans towards manifesto, but I do not find this something to criticise. I do wish there were more of a discussion concerning some aspects, e.g. the supposed ownership of children. However, I feel that the book still provides a frame of reference to think about such issues, so this is not a major issue. This is a provocation to think, not a handbook.

For me, the chapters on mothers and schooling were the most important. The chapter on schooling really opened my eyes to my school experience, even though (or perhaps because) I had a very different experience in school to the author and most other readers.

A very worthwhile read. I wish I had not dropped that class where we would have read this, but the professor was also very disorganized.

[Laila · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a challenging, thought-provoking essay that really asks you to interrogate assumptions most of us never question, especially the idea that adult authority over children is always natural or justified. Madeline Lane-McKinley’s arguments about adult supremacy, the weaponization of childhood, and how society consistently prioritizes adult comfort over children’s futures were uncomfortable in the way important books often are. I appreciated how she tied these ideas to larger systems like capitalism, education, and the nuclear family, and how clearly her political convictions came through.
That said, the essay can feel dense at times, and some arguments are more forcefully asserted than fully explored, which kept it from being a five star read for me. Even so, it stayed with me long after I finished, and I found myself rethinking how we talk about care, autonomy, and solidarity across generations. It’s not an easy or cozy read, but it’s an important one, and I’m glad I read it.

[hanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

really interesting read but didn't fully resonate for me. the foundational issue driving this book--the oppression of children as a class--is one that i'm fascinated by and come into contact with every day at work, but unfortunately there's very little written in the way of actual, tangible ways to dismantle that system. instead, it's largely theoretical (interesting theory nonetheless) and limited to a very western way of thinking about children, the family structure, and communal styles of living. while i like the idea of utopian thinking and allowing ourselves to imagine realities outside our current conditions, it was slightly frustrating that much of the focus is on that style of progress, rather than drawing more heavily on cultures and communities that already practice these ways of living. also would have loved to see more children and their perspectives incorporated into this book, it feels a bit lacking in that regard.

[Kristin]

Some interesting thoughts, but not a lot of rigor or following an original line. Hodgepodge is the word that comes to mind—lots of short quotes by other thinkers presented without much context, spanning great swaths of time. In that way, it did feel like a good compendium of other people’s work I should read, but that is not a compliment. The last chapter asks us to approach it like science fiction—and then singularly fails to deliver on any vision, utopian or otherwise, required of any world-building.

I found it meandering, intellectually lightweight, and disappointing. I’m not sure what it’s purpose is, but I do not believe it’s about solidarity with children