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Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy
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.
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.
192 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 2025
26 people are currently reading
702 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 29, 2025
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.
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.
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November 19, 2025A 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.
August 22, 2025
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.
November 3, 2025
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
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
November 24, 2025
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!!
November 20, 2025
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.
This is a powerful, startling, and wide-eyed piece of work, and I devoured it.
This is a powerful, startling, and wide-eyed piece of work, and I devoured it.
September 27, 2025
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.
“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.
November 17, 2025
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.
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.
December 12, 2025
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 helplessness and 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, leave them alone.
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, leave them alone.
December 18, 2025
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.
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.
December 21, 2025
4.5 stars.
I read this book as a part of a Radical Parents + Accomplices book club - I feel like I got a lot out of it, both things I agreed with and things that I didn’t. I love that this encouraged my ways of thinking about adult x child relationships and solidarity and that it challenged me at times.
I read this book as a part of a Radical Parents + Accomplices book club - I feel like I got a lot out of it, both things I agreed with and things that I didn’t. I love that this encouraged my ways of thinking about adult x child relationships and solidarity and that it challenged me at times.
December 12, 2025
This book is brilliant.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews