           J.6 What methods of child rearing do anarchists advocate?

   Anarchists have long been aware of the importance of child rearing and
   education. As such, we are aware that child rearing should aim to
   develop "a well-rounded individuality" and not "a patient work slave,
   professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist."
   [Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks, p. 108] In this section of the FAQ we
   will discuss anarchist approaches to child rearing bearing in mind
   "that it is through the channel of the child that the development of
   the mature man must go, and that the present ideas of. . . educating or
   training. . . are such as to stifle the natural growth of the child."
   [Ibid., p. 107]

   If one accepts the thesis that the authoritarian family is the breeding
   ground for both individual psychological problems and political
   reaction, it follows that anarchists should try to develop ways of
   raising children that will not psychologically cripple them but instead
   enable them to accept freedom and responsibility while developing
   natural self-regulation. We will refer to children raised in such a way
   as "free children."

   Work in this field is still in its infancy (no pun intended). Wilhelm
   Reich is again the main pioneer in this field (an excellent, short
   introduction to his ideas can be found in Maurice Brinton's The
   Irrational in Politics). In Children of the Future, Reich made numerous
   suggestions, based on his research and clinical experience, for
   parents, psychologists, and educators striving to develop libertarian
   methods of child rearing. (He did not use the term "libertarian," but
   that is what his methods are.)

   Hence, in this and the following sections we will summarise Reich's
   main ideas as well as those of other libertarian psychologists and
   educators who have been influenced by him, such as A.S. Neill and
   Alexander Lowen. Section [1]J.6.1 will examine the theoretical
   principles involved in raising free children, while subsequent sections
   will illustrate their practical application with concrete examples.
   Finally, in section [2]J.6.8, we will examine the anarchist approach to
   the problems of adolescence.

   Such an approach to child rearing is based upon the insight that
   children "do not constitute anyone's property: they are neither the
   property of the parents nor even of society. They belong only to their
   own future freedom." [Michael Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of
   Bakunin, p. 327] As such, what happens to a child when it is growing up
   shapes the person they become and the society they live in. The key
   question for people interested in freedom is whether "the child [is] to
   be considered as an individuality, or as an object to be moulded
   according to the whims and fancies of those about it?" [Emma Goldman,
   Op. Cit., p. 107] Libertarian child rearing is the means by which the
   individuality of the child is respected and developed.

   This is in stark contrast to standard capitalist (and individualist
   anarchist we should note) claim that children are the property of their
   parents. If we accept that children are the property of their parents
   then we are implicitly stating that a child's formative years are spent
   in slavery, hardly a relationship which will promote the individuality
   and freedom of the child or the wider society. Little wonder that most
   anarchists reject such assertions. Instead they argue that the "rights
   of the parents shall be confined to loving their children and
   exercising over them . . . authority [that] does not run counter to
   their morality, their mental development, or their future freedom."
   [Bakunin, Op. Cit., p. 327] Being someone's property (i.e. slave) runs
   counter to all these and "it follows that society, the whole future of
   which depends upon adequate education and upbringing of children. . . ,
   has not only the right but also the duty to watch over them..." [Ibid.,
   p. 327]

   Hence child rearing is part of society, a communal process by which
   children learn what it means to be an individual by being respected as
   one by others. In Bakunin's words, "real freedom - that is, the full
   awareness and the realisation thereof in every individual,
   pre-eminently based upon a feeling of one's dignity and upon the
   genuine respect for someone else's freedom and dignity, i.e. upon
   justice - such freedom can develop in children only through the
   rational development of their minds, character and will." [Op. Cit., p.
   327]

   We wish to point out at the beginning that a great deal of work remains
   to be done in this field. Therefore our comments should be regarded
   merely as tentative bases for further reflection and research by those
   involved with raising and educating children. There is, and cannot be,
   any "rule book" for raising free children, because to follow an
   inflexible rule book is to ignore the fact that each child and its
   environment is unique and therefore demands unique responses from its
   parents. Hence the "principles" of libertarian child rearing to which
   we will refer should not be thought of as rules, but rather, as
   experimental hypotheses to be tested by parents within their own
   situation by applying their intelligence and deriving their own
   individual conclusions.

   Bringing up children must be like education, and based on similar
   principles, namely "upon the free growth and development of the innate
   forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for
   the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which
   shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible."
   [Goldman, Op. Cit., p. 115] Indeed, child rearing and education cannot
   be separated as life itself is an education and so must share the same
   principles and viewed as a process of "development and exploration,
   rather than as one of repressing a child's instincts and inculcating
   obedience and discipline." [Martha A. Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain,
   p. 132]

   Moreover, the role of parental example is very important to raising
   free children. Children often learn by mimicking their parents -
   children do what their parents do, not as they say. If their mother and
   father lie to each other, scream, fight and so on, then the child will
   probably do so as well. Children's behaviour does not come out thin
   air, they are a product of the environment they are brought up in
   (partly by, initially at least, copying the parent). Children can only
   be encouraged by example, not by threats and commands. How parents act
   can be an obstacle to the development of a free child. Parents must,
   therefore, be aware that they must do more than just say the right
   things, but also act as anarchists in order to produce free children.

   The sad fact is that most modern people have lost the ability to raise
   free children, and regaining this ability will be a long process of
   trial and error and parent education in which it is to be hoped that
   each succeeding generation will learn from the failures and successes
   of their predecessors, and so improve. In the best-case scenario, over
   the course of a few generations the number of progressive parents will
   continue to grow and raise ever freer children, who in turn will become
   even more progressive parents themselves, thus gradually changing mass
   psychology in a libertarian direction. Such changes can come about very
   fast, as can be seen from various communes all over the world and
   especially in the Israel-Palestine kibbutz where society is organised
   according to libertarian principles, and children are mainly growing in
   their collective homes. As Reich puts it:

     "We have learned that instead of a jump into the realm of the
     Children of the Future, we can hope for no more than a steady
     advance, in which the healthy new overlaps the sick old structure,
     with the new slowly outgrowing the old." [Children of the Future,
     pp. 38-39]

   By means of freedom-based child rearing and education, along with other
   methods of consciousness raising, as well as encouraging resistance to
   the existing social order anarchists hope to prepare the psychological
   foundation for a social paradigm shift, from authoritarian to
   libertarian institutions and values. And indeed, a gradual cultural
   evolution toward increasing freedom does seem to exist. For example, as
   A.S. Neill writes in Summerhill, "There is a slow trend to freedom,
   sexual and otherwise. In my boyhood, a woman went bathing wearing
   stockings and a long dress. Today, women show legs and bodies. Children
   are getting more freedom with every generation. Today, only a few
   lunatics put cayenne pepper on a baby's thumb to stop sucking. Today,
   only a few countries beat their children in school." [p. 115]

   Most anarchists believe that, just as charity begins at home, so does
   the anarchist revolution. As some anarchists raise their own children
   in capitalist society and/or are involved in the raising and education
   of the children of other parents, they can practice in part libertarian
   principles even before the revolution. Hence we think it is important
   to discuss libertarian child rearing in some detail.

J.6.1 What are the main principles of raising free children and the main
obstacles to implementing those principles?

   Let's consider the obstacles first. As Reich points out, the biggest
   one is the training and character of most parents, physicians, and
   educators. Based on his clinical experience, Reich maintained that
   virtually all adults in our society have some degree of psychological
   problems, which is manifested somatically as a rigid muscular "armour":
   chronic muscular tensions and spasms in various regions of the body.
   One of the main functions of this armour is to inhibit the pleasurable
   sensations of life-energy that naturally "stream" or flow through an
   unarmoured body. Reich postulated that there is one basic bioenergy
   ("orgone") in the body, identical with what Freud called "libido,"
   which, besides animating the tissues and organs is also the energy of
   sex and the emotions (we should note that most anarchists do not
   subscribe to Reich's idea of "orgone" - the existence of which, we may
   note, has not been proved. However, the idea of character armour, by
   which individuals within a hierarchical society create psychological
   walls/defences around themselves is one most anarchists accept. Such
   walls will obviously have an effect both on the mental and physical
   state of the individual, and their capacity for living a free life and
   experiencing pleasure). This means that the pleasurable "streamings" of
   this bioenergy, which can be felt when the muscular armour is relaxed,
   have an erotic or "libidinous" quality. Thus an unarmoured organism
   (such as a new-born infant) automatically experiences pleasure with
   every breath, a pleasure derived from perception of the natural
   bioenergetic processes within its body. Such a mode of being in the
   world makes life intrinsically worth living and renders superfluous all
   questions about its "meaning" or "purpose" -- questions that occur only
   to armoured people, who have lost contact with their bioenergetic core
   of bodily sensations (or it is distorted, and so is changed from a
   source of pleasures to a source of suffering) and thus restricts their
   capacity to fully enjoy life.

   It is important for those involved in child rearing and education to
   understand how armouring develops in the new-born child. Reich points
   out that under the influence of a compulsive, pleasure-denying
   morality, children are taught to inhibit the spontaneous flow of
   life-energy in the body. Similarly, they are taught to disregard most
   bodily sensations. Due to Oedipal conflicts in the patriarchal family
   (see below), parents usually take the most severely repressive
   disciplinary measures against sexual expressions of life-energy in
   children. Thus, all erotic feelings, including the erotically-tinged
   "streaming" sensations, come to be regarded as "bad," "animalistic,"
   etc., and so their perception begins to arouse anxiety, which leads,
   among other bad results, to chronic muscular tensions as a way of
   cutting off or defending against such perceptions and their attendant
   anxiety. Shallow breathing, for example, reduces the amount of
   life-energy available to flow into excitation and emotion; tightening
   the muscles of the pelvic floor and abdomen reduces sexual feelings,
   and so on. As these tensions become chronic and unconscious, piling up
   in layer after layer of muscular armour, the person is eventually left
   with a feeling of inner emptiness or "deadness" and -- not surprisingly
   -- a lack of joy in life.

   For those who fail to build a stable physical and psychological armour
   around themselves to suppress these feelings and sensation, they just
   twist them and are flooded again and again with intense unpleasant
   feelings and sensations.

   Muscular armouring has its most profound effect on back pains and
   various respiration problems. Reich found that the "normal" man or
   woman in our society cannot spontaneously take full, deep, natural
   breaths, which involves both the chest and abdomen. Instead, most
   people (except when making a conscious effort) restrict their breathing
   through unconscious tensing of various muscles. Since the natural
   response to any restriction in the ability to breathe is anxiety,
   people growing up in repressive cultures such as ours are plagued by a
   tendency toward chronic anxiety. As a defence against this anxiety,
   they develop further layers of muscular armouring, which further
   restricts their ability to breathe, and so on, in a vicious circle. In
   other words, it is literally true that, as Max Stirner said, one cannot
   "take breath" in our authoritarian society with its life-denying
   atmosphere based on punishments, threats, and fear.

   Of course sex is not the only expression of life-energy that parents
   try to stifle in children. There are also, for example, the child's
   natural vocal expressions (shouting, screaming, bellowing, crying,
   etc.) and natural body motility. As Reich notes,

     "Small children go through a phase of development characterised by
     vigorous activity of the voice musculature. The joy the infant
     derives from loud noises (crying, shrieking, and forming a variety
     of sounds) is regarded by many parents as pathological
     aggressiveness. The children are accordingly admonished not to
     scream, to be 'still,' etc. The impulses of the voice apparatus are
     inhibited, its musculature becomes chronically contracted, and the
     child becomes quiet, 'well-brought-up,' and withdrawn. The effect of
     such mistreatment is soon manifested in eating disturbances, general
     apathy, pallor of the face, etc. Speech disturbances and retardation
     of speech development are presumably caused in this manner. In the
     adult we see the effects of such mistreatment in the form of spasms
     of the throat. The automatic constrictions of the glottis and the
     deep throat musculature, with subsequent inhibition of the
     aggressive impulses of the head and neck, seems to be particularly
     characteristic." [Op. Cit., p. 128]

   (And we must add, that the suppression of the urge to move all children
   have is most destructive to the 15% or so of "Hyper-active" children,
   whose urge to move is hard to suppress.)

   "Clinical experience has taught us," Reich concludes, "that small
   children must be allowed to 'shout themselves out' when the shouting is
   inspired by pleasure. This might be disagreeable to some parents, but
   questions of education must be decided exclusively in the interests of
   the child, not in those of the adults." [Ibid.]

   Besides deadening the pleasurable streamings of life energy in the
   body, muscular armouring also functions to inhibit the anxiety
   generated by the presence of anti-social, cruel, and perverse impulses
   within the psyche (impulses referred to by Reich as "secondary" drives)
   -- for example, destructiveness, sadism, greed, power hunger,
   brutality, rape fantasies, etc. Ironically, these secondary drives
   result from the suppression of the primary drives (e.g. for sex,
   physical activity, vocal expression, etc.) and the sensations of
   pleasure associated with them. The secondary drives develop because,
   when muscular armouring sets in and a person loses touch with his or
   her bioenergetic core and other emotional urges, the only emotional
   expressions that can get through the thick, hard wall of armour are
   distorted, harsh, and/or mechanical. Thus, for example, a heavily
   armoured person who tries to express love may find that the emotion is
   shredded by the wall of armour and comes out in distorted form as an
   impulse to hurt the person loved (sadism) -- an impulse that causes
   anxiety and then has to be repressed. In other words, compulsive
   morality (i.e. acting according to externally imposed rules) becomes
   necessary to control the secondary drives which compulsion itself
   creates. By such processes, authoritarian child-rearing becomes
   self-justifying. Thus:

     "Psychoanalysts have failed to distinguish between primary natural
     and secondary perverse, cruel drives, and they are continuously
     killing nature in the new-born while they try to extinguish the
     'brutish little animal.' They are completely ignorant of the fact
     that it is exactly this killing of the natural principle which
     creates the secondary perverse and cruel nature, human nature so
     called, and that these artificial cultural creations in turn make
     compulsive moralism and brutal laws necessary" [Ibid., p. 17-18].

   Moralism, however, can never get at the root of the problem of
   secondary drives, but in fact only increases the pressure of crime and
   guilt. The real solution is to let children develop what Reich calls
   natural self-regulation. This can be done only by not subjecting them
   to punishment, coercion, threats, moralistic lectures and admonitions,
   withdrawal of love, etc. in an attempt to inhibit their spontaneous
   expression of natural life-impulses. The systematic development of the
   emphatic tendencies of the young infant is the best way to "socialise"
   and restrict activities that are harmful to the others. As A.S. Neill
   points out, "self-regulation implies a belief in the goodness of human
   nature; a belief that there is not, and never was, original sin." [Op.
   Cit., p. 103]

   According to Neill, children who are given freedom from birth and not
   forced to conform to parental expectations spontaneously learn how to
   keep themselves clean and develop social qualities like courtesy,
   common sense, an interest in learning, respect for the rights of
   others, and so forth (see [3]next section). However, once the child has
   been armoured through authoritarian methods intended to force it to
   develop such qualities, it becomes what Reich calls "biopathic" -- out
   of touch with its living core and therefore no longer able to develop
   self-regulation. In this stage it becomes harder and harder for the
   pro-social emotions to shape the developing mode of life of the new
   member of society. At that point, when the secondary drives develop,
   parental authoritarianism becomes a necessity. As Reich puts it:

     "This close interrelation between biopathic behaviour and
     authoritarian countermeasures seems to be automatic. Self-regulation
     appears to have no place in and no influence upon emotions which do
     not come from the living core directly but only as if through a
     thick hard wall. Moreover, one has the impression that secondary
     drives cannot stand self-regulatory conditions of existence. They
     force sharp discipline on the part of the educator or parent. It is
     as if a child with an essentially secondary-drive structure feels
     that it cannot function or exist without disciplinary guidance. This
     is paralleled by the interlacing of self-regulation in the healthy
     child with self-regulation in the environment. Here the child cannot
     function unless it has freedom of decision and movement. It cannot
     tolerate discipline any more than the armoured child can tolerate
     freedom."

   This inability to tolerate freedom, which the vast majority of people
   develop automatically from the way they are raised, is what makes the
   whole subject of armouring and its prevention of crucial importance to
   anarchists. Reich concludes that if parents do not suppress nature in
   the first place, then no anti-social drives will be created and no
   authoritarianism will be required to suppress them: "What you so
   desperately and vainly try to achieve by way of compulsion and
   admonition is there in the new-born infant ready to live and function.
   Let it grow as nature requires, and change our institutions
   accordingly" [Ibid., p. 47, emphasis in original].

   As Alexander Lowen points out in Fear of Life, parents are particularly
   anxious to suppress the sexual expressions of life energy in their
   children because of unresolved Oedipal conflicts within themselves.

   Hence, in order to raise psychologically healthy children, parents need
   to acquire self-knowledge, particularly of how Oedipal conflicts,
   sibling rivalry, and other internal conflicts develop in family
   relationships, and to free themselves as much as possible from neurotic
   forms of armouring. The difficulty of parents acquiring such
   self-knowledge and sufficiently de-conditioning themselves is obviously
   another obstacle to raising self-regulated children.

   However, the greatest obstacle is the fact that armouring and other
   twisting mechanisms set in so very early in life, i.e. soon after
   birth. Reich emphasises that with the first armour blockings, the
   infant's self-regulatory powers begin to wane. "They become steadily
   weaker as the armouring spreads over the whole organism, and they must
   be replaced by compulsive, moral principles if the child is to exist
   and survive in its given environment." [Ibid., pp. 44-45] Hence it is
   important for parents to obtain a thorough knowledge of what armouring
   and other rigid suppressions are and how they function, so that from
   the beginning they can prevent (or at least decrease) them from forming
   in their children. Some practical examples of how this can be done will
   be discussed in the [4]next section.

   Finally, Reich cautions that it is crucial to avoid any mixing of
   concepts. "One cannot mix a bit of self-regulation with a bit of moral
   demand. Either we trust nature as basically decent and self-regulatory
   or we do not, and then there is only one way, that of training by
   compulsion. It is essential to grasp the fact that the two ways of
   upbringing do not go together." [Ibid., p. 46]

J.6.2. What are some examples of libertarian child-rearing methods applied to
the care of new-born infants?

   According to Reich, the problems of parenting a free child actually
   begin before conception, with the need for a prospective mother to free
   herself as much as possible from chronic muscular tensions, especially
   in the pelvic area, which may inhibit the optimal development of a
   foetus. As Reich points out, the mother's body provides the environment
   for the child from the moment the embryo is formed until the moment of
   birth, and strong muscular armouring in her pelvis as a result of
   sexual repression or other emotional problems is very detrimental. Such
   a mother will have a bioenergetically "dead" and possibly spastic
   uterus, which can traumatise an infant even before it is born by
   reducing the circulation of blood and body fluids and making the energy
   metabolism inefficient, thus damaging the child's vitality.

   Moreover, it has been found in many studies that not only the physical
   health of the mother can influence the foetus. Various psychological
   stresses influence the chemical and hormonal environment, affecting the
   foetus. Even short ones, when acute, can have significant effects on
   it.

   Immediately after birth, it is important for the mother to establish
   contact with her child. This means, basically, constant loving
   attention to the baby, expressed by plenty of holding, cuddling,
   playing, etc., and especially by breast feeding. By such "orgonotic"
   contact (to use Reich's term), the mother is able to establish the
   initial emotional bonding with the new born, and a non-verbal
   understanding of the child's needs. This is only possible, however, if
   she is in touch with her own internal processes - emotional and
   cognitive - and bioenergetic core, i.e. is not too neurotically
   armoured (in Reich's terminology). Thus:

     "The orgonotic sense of contact, a function of the . . . energy
     field of both the mother and the child, is unknown to most
     specialists; however, the old country doctor knew it well. . . .
     Orgonotic contact is the most essential experiential and emotional
     element in the interrelationship between mother and child,
     particularly prenatally and during the first days and weeks of life.
     The future fate of the child depends on it. It seems to be the core
     of the new-born infant's emotional development." [Ibid. p. 99]

   It is less crucial but still important for the father to establish
   orgonotic contact as well, although since fathers lack the primary
   means of establishing it -- namely the ability to breast feed -- their
   contact can never be as close as the mother's (see below).

   A new-born child has only one way of expressing its needs: through
   crying. Crying has many nuances and can convey much more than the level
   of distress of the child. If a mother is unable to establish contact at
   the most basic emotional ("bioenergetic," according to Reich) level,
   she will be unable to understand intuitively what needs the child is
   expressing through its crying. Any unmet needs will in turn be felt by
   the child as a deprivation, to which it will respond with a wide array
   of negative emotions and deleterious physiological processes and
   emotional tension. If continued for long, such tensions can become
   chronic and thus the beginning of "armouring" and adaptation to a
   "cruel" reality.

   The most important factor in the establishment of bonding is the tender
   physical contact between mother and infant is undoubtedly breast
   feeding. Thus:

     "The most salient place of contact in the infant's body is the
     bioenergetically highly charged mouth and throat. This body organ
     reaches out immediately for gratification. If the nipple of the
     mother reacts to the infant's sucking movements in a biophysically
     normal manner with sensations of pleasure, it will become strongly
     erect and the orgonotic excitation of the nipple will become one
     with that of the infant's mouth, just as in the orastically
     gratifying sexual act, in which the male and female genitals
     luminate and fuse orgonotically. There is nothing 'abnormal' or
     'disgusting' in this. Every healthy mother experiences the sucking
     as pleasure and yields to it. . . . However, about 80 percent of all
     women suffer from vaginal anaesthesia and frigidity. Their nipples
     are correspondingly anorgonotic, i.e. 'dead.' The mother may develop
     anxiety or loathing in response to what would naturally be a
     sensation of pleasure aroused in the breast by the infant's sucking.
     This is why so many mothers do not want to nurse their babies." [pp.
     115-116]

   Reich and other libertarian psychologists therefore maintain that the
   practice of bottle feeding is harmful, particularly if it completely
   replaces breast feeding from the day of birth, because it eliminates
   one of the most important forms of establishing bioenergetic contact
   between mother and child. This lack of contact can then contribute in
   later life to "oral" forms of neurotic character structure or traits.
   (For more on these, see Alexander Lowen, Physical Dynamics of Character
   Structure, Chapter 9, "The Oral Character"]. Lowen believes that the
   practice of breast feeding should be continued for about three years,
   as it usually is among "primitive" peoples, and that weaning before
   this time is experienced as a major trauma. "[I]f the breast is
   available to a child for about three years, which I believe to be the
   time required to fulfil a child's oral needs, weaning causes very
   little trauma, since the loss of this pleasure is offset by the many
   other pleasures the child can then have." [Depression and the Body, p.
   133]

   Another harmful practice in infant care is the compulsive-neurotic
   method of feeding children on schedule, invented by Pirquet in Vienna,
   which "was devastatingly wrong and harmful to countless children."
   Frustration of oral needs through this practice (which is fortunately
   less in vogue now than it was fifty years ago), is guaranteed to
   produce neurotic armouring in infants.

   As Reich puts it, "As long as parents, doctors, and educators approach
   infants with false, unbending behaviour, inflexible opinions,
   condescension, and officiousness, instead of with orgonotic contact,
   infants will continue to be quiet, withdrawn, apathetic, 'autistic,'
   'peculiar,' and, later, 'little wild animals,' whom the cultivated feel
   they have to 'tame.'" [Op. Cit. p. 124]

   Another harmful practice is allowing the baby to "cry itself out."
   Thus: "Parking a baby in a baby carriage in the garden, perhaps for
   hours at a time, is a dangerous practice. No one can know what
   agonising feelings of fear and loneliness a baby can experience on
   waking up suddenly to find himself alone in a strange place. Those who
   have heard a baby's screams on such occasions have some idea of the
   cruelty of this stupid custom." [Neill, Summerhill, p. 336] Indeed, in
   The Physical Dynamics of Character Structure, Lowen has traced specific
   neuroses, particularly depression, to this practice. Hospitals also
   have been guilty of psychologically damaging sick infants by isolating
   them from their mothers, a practice that has undoubtedly produced
   untold numbers of neurotics and psychopaths.

   Also, as Reich notes, "the sadistic habit of circumcision will soon be
   recognised as the senseless, fanatical cruelty it truly is." [Op. Cit.,
   p. 68] He remarks that he has observed infants who took over two weeks
   to "recover" from the trauma of circumcision, a "recovery" that left
   permanent psychological scars in the form of chronic muscular tensions
   in the pelvic floor. These tensions form the first layer of pelvic
   armouring, to which sexual repression and other inhibitions (especially
   those acquired during toilet training) later add.

   The diaphragm, however, is perhaps the most important area to protect
   from early armouring. After observing infants for several years in a
   research setting, Reich concluded that armouring in babies usually
   appears first as a blocking of free respiration, expressed as harsh,
   rough, uneven, or laboured breathing, which may lead to colds, coughs,
   bronchitis, etc.

   "The early blocking of respiration seemed to gain importance rapidly as
   more children were observed. Somehow the diaphragmatic region appeared
   to respond first and most severely to emotional, bioenergetic
   discomfort." [Ibid., p. 110] Hence the infant's breathing is a key
   indicator of its emotional health, and any disturbance is a signal that
   something is wrong. Or, as Neill puts it, "The sign of a well-reared
   child is his free, uninhibited breathing. It shows that he is not
   afraid of life." [Op. Cit., p. 131]

   Neill sums up the libertarian attitude toward the care of infants as
   follows: "Self-regulation means the right of a baby to live freely
   without outside authority in things psychic and somatic. It means that
   the baby feeds when it is hungry; that it becomes clean in habits only
   when it wants to; that it is never stormed at nor spanked; that it is
   always loved and protected." [Op. Cit. p. 105]

   Obviously self-regulation doesn't mean leaving the baby alone when it
   heads toward a cliff or starts playing with an electrical socket.
   Anarchists do not advocate a lack of common sense. We recognise that
   adults must override an infant's will when it is a question of
   protecting its physical safety. As Neill writes, "Only a fool in charge
   of young children would allow unbarred bedroom windows or an
   unprotected fire in the nursery. Yet, too often, young enthusiasts for
   self-regulation come to my school as visitors, and exclaim at our lack
   of freedom in locking poison in a lab closet, or our prohibition about
   playing on the fire escape. The whole freedom movement is marred and
   despised because so many advocates of freedom have not got their feet
   on the ground." [Ibid., p. 106]

   Nevertheless, the libertarian position does not imply that a child
   should be punished for getting into a dangerous situation. Nor is the
   best thing to do in such a case to shout in alarm (unless that is the
   only way to warn the child before it is too late), but simply to remove
   the danger without any fuss. As Neill says, "Unless a child is mentally
   defective, he will soon discover what interests him. Left free from
   excited cries and angry voices, he will be unbelievably sensible in his
   dealing with material of all kinds." [Ibid., p. 108] Provided, of
   course, that he or she has been allowed self-regulation from the
   beginning, and thus has not developed any irrational, secondary drives.

J.6.3 What are some examples of libertarian child-rearing methods applied to the
care of young children?

   The way to raise a free child becomes clear when one considers how an
   unfree child is raised. Thus imagine the typical infant, John Smith,
   whose upbringing A.S. Neill describes:

     "His natural functions were left alone during the diaper period. But
     when he began to crawl and perform on the floor, words like naughty
     and dirty began to float about the house, and a grim beginning was
     made in teaching him to be clean.

     "Before this, his hand had been taken away every time it touched his
     genitals; and he soon came to associate the genital prohibition with
     the acquired disgust about faeces. Thus, years later, when he became
     a travelling salesman, his story repertoire consisted of a balanced
     number of sex and toilet jokes.

     "Much of his training was conditioned by relatives and neighbours.
     Mother and father were most anxious to be correct -- to do the
     proper thing -- so that when relatives or next-door neighbours came,
     John had to show himself as a well-trained child. He had to say
     Thank you when Auntie gave him a piece of chocolate; and he had to
     be most careful about his table manners; and especially, he had to
     refrain from speaking when adults were speaking."
     [Summerhill, p. 97]

   When he was little older, things got worse for John. "All his curiosity
   about the origins of life were met with clumsy lies, lies so effective
   that his curiosity about life and birth disappeared. The lies about
   life became combined with fears when at the age of five his mother
   found him having genital play with his sister of four and the girl next
   door. The severe spanking that followed (Father added to it when he
   came home from work) forever conveyed to John the lesson that sex is
   filthy and sinful, something one must not even think of." [Ibid.]

   Of course, parents' ways of imparting negative messages about sex are
   not necessarily this severe, especially in our allegedly enlightened
   age. However, it is not necessary for a child to be spanked or even
   scolded or lectured in order to acquire a sex-negative attitude.
   Children are very intuitive and will receive the message "sex is bad"
   from subtle parental cues like facial expressions, tone of voice,
   embarrassed silence, avoidance of certain topics, etc. Mere
   "toleration" of sexual curiosity and play is far different in its
   psychological effects from positive affirmation.

   Based on the findings of clinical psychiatry, Reich postulated a "first
   puberty" in children, from the ages of about 3 to 6, when the child's
   attention shifts from the satisfaction of oral needs to an interest in
   its sexuality -- a stage characterised by genital play of all kinds.
   The parents' task at this stage is not only to allow children to engage
   in such play, but to encourage it. "In the child, before the age of
   four or five, genitality has not yet fully developed. The task here
   plainly consists of removing the obstacles in the way of natural
   development toward full genitality. To fulfil this task, we must agree
   that a first puberty in children exists; that genital games are the
   peak of its development; that lack of genital activity is a sign of
   sickness and not of health, as previously assumed; and that healthy
   children play genital games of all kinds, which should be encouraged
   and not hindered." [Children of the Future, p. 66]

   Along the same lines, to prevent the formation of sex-negative
   attitudes means that nakedness should never be discouraged. "The baby
   should see its parents naked from the beginning. However, the child
   should be told when he is ready to understand that some people don't
   like to see children naked and that, in the presence of such people, he
   should wear clothes." [Neill, Summerhill, p. 229]

   Neill maintains that not only should parents never spank or punish a
   child for genital play, but that spanking and other forms of punishment
   should never be used in any circumstances, because they instil fear,
   turning children into cowards and often leading to phobias. "Fear must
   be entirely eliminated -- fear of adults, fear of punishment, fear of
   disapproval, fear of God. Only hate can flourish in an atmosphere of
   fear." [Ibid., p. 124]

   Punishment also turns children into sadists. "The cruelty of many
   children springs from the cruelty that has been practised on them by
   adults. You cannot be beaten without wishing to beat someone else. . .
   Every beating makes a child sadistic in desire or practice." [Ibid., p.
   269, 271] This is obviously an important consideration to anarchists,
   as sadistic drives provide the psychological ground for militarism,
   war, police brutality, and so on. Such drives are undoubtedly also part
   of the desire to exercise hierarchical authority, with its
   possibilities for using negative sanctions against subordinates as an
   outlet for sadistic impulses.

   Child beating is particularly cowardly because it is a way for adults
   to vent their hatred, frustration, and sadism on those who are unable
   to defend themselves. Such cruelty is, of course, always rationalised
   with excuse like "it hurts me more than it does you," etc., or
   explained in moral terms, like "I don't want my boy to be soft" or "I
   want him to prepare him for a harsh world" or "I spank my children
   because my parents spanked me, and it did me a hell of a lot of good."
   But despite such rationalisations, the fact remains that punishment is
   always an act of hate. To this hate, the child responds in kind by
   hating the parents, followed by fantasy, guilt, and repression. For
   example, the child may fantasise the father's death, which immediately
   causes guilt, and so is repressed. Often the hatred induced by
   punishment emerges in fantasies that are seemingly remote from the
   parents, such as stories of giant killing -- always popular with
   children because the giant represents the father. Obviously, the sense
   of guilt produced by such fantasies is very advantageous to organised
   religions that promise redemption from "sin." It is surely no
   coincidence that such religions are enthusiastic promoters of the
   sex-negative morality and disciplinarian child rearing practices that
   keep supplying them with recruits.

   What is worse, however, is that punishment actually creates "problem
   children." This is so because the parent arouses more and more hatred
   (and diminishing trust in other human beings) in the child with each
   spanking, which is expressed in still worse behaviour, calling for more
   spankings, and so on, in a vicious circle. In contrast, "The
   self-regulated child does not need any punishment," Neill argues, "and
   he does not go through this hate cycle. He is never punished and he
   does not need to behave badly. He has no use for lying and for breaking
   things. His body has never been called filthy or wicked. He has not
   needed to rebel against authority or to fear his parents. Tantrums he
   will usually have, but they will be short-lived and not tend toward
   neurosis." [Ibid., p. 166]

   We could cite many further examples of how libertarian principles of
   child-rearing can be applied in practice, but we must limit ourselves
   to these few. The basic principles can be summed up as follows: Get rid
   of authority, moralism, and the desire to "improve" and "civilise"
   children. Allow them to be themselves, without pushing them around,
   bribing, threatening, admonishing, lecturing, or otherwise forcing them
   to do anything. Refrain from action unless the child, by expressing
   their "freedom" restricts the freedom of others and explain what is
   wrong about such actions and never mechanically punish.

   This is, of course, a radical philosophy, which few parents are willing
   to follow. It is quite amazing how people who call themselves
   libertarians in political and economic matters draw the line when it
   comes to their behaviour within the family -- as if such behaviour had
   no wider social consequences! Hence, the opponents of children's
   freedom are legion, as are their objections to libertarian child
   rearing. In the next few sections we will examine some of the most
   common of these objections.

J.6.4 If children have nothing to fear, how can they be good?

   Obedience that is based on fear of punishment, this-worldly or
   otherworldly, is not really goodness, it is merely cowardice. True
   morality (i.e. respect for others and one-self) comes from inner
   conviction based on experience, it cannot be imposed from without by
   fear. Nor can it be inspired by hope of reward, such as praise or the
   promise of heaven, which is simply bribery. As noted in the [5]previous
   section, if children are given as much freedom as possible from the day
   of birth and not forced to conform to parental expectations, they will
   spontaneously learn the basic principles of social behaviour, such as
   cleanliness, courtesy, and so forth. But they must be allowed to
   develop them at their own speed, at the natural stage of their growth,
   not when parents think they should develop them. And what is "natural"
   timing must be discovered by observation, not by defining it a priori
   based on one's own expectations.

   Can a child really be taught to keep itself clean without being
   punished for getting dirty? According to many psychologists, it is not
   only possible but vitally important for the child's mental health to do
   so, since punishment will give the child a fixed and repressed interest
   in his bodily functions. As Reich and Lowen have shown, for example,
   various forms of compulsive and obsessive neuroses can be traced back
   to the punishments used in toilet training. Dogs, cats, horses, and
   cows have no complexes about excrement. Complexes in human children
   come from the manner of their instruction.

   As Neill observes, "When the mother says naughty or dirty or even tut
   tut, the element of right and wrong arises. The question becomes a
   moral one -- when it should remain a physical one." He suggests that
   the wrong way to deal with a child who likes to play with faeces is to
   tell him he is being dirty. "The right way is to allow him to live out
   his interest in excrement by providing him with mud or clay. In this
   way, he will sublimate his interest without repression. He will live
   through his interest; and in doing so, kill it." [Summerhill, p. 174]

   Similarly, sceptics will probably question how children can be induced
   to eat a healthy diet without threats of punishment. The answer can be
   discovered by a simple experiment: set out on the table all kinds of
   foods, from candy and ice cream to whole wheat bread, lettuce, sprouts,
   and so on, and allow the child complete freedom to choose what is
   desired or to eat nothing at all if he or she is not hungry. Parents
   will find that the average child will begin choosing a balanced diet
   after about a week, after the desire for prohibited or restricted foods
   has been satisfied. This is an example of what can be called "trusting
   nature." That the question of how to "train" a child to eat properly
   should even be an issue says volumes about how little the concept of
   freedom for children is accepted or even understood, in our society.
   Unfortunately, the concept of "training" still holds the field in this
   and most other areas.

   The disciplinarian argument that that children must be forced to
   respect property is also defective, because it always requires some
   sacrifice of a child's play life (and childhood should be devoted to
   play, not to "preparing for adulthood," because playing is what
   children spontaneously do). The libertarian view is that a child should
   arrive at a sense of value out of his or her own free choice. This
   means not scolding or punishing them for breaking or damaging things.
   As they grow out of the stage of preadolescent indifference to
   property, they learn to respect it naturally.

   "But shouldn't a child at least be punished for stealing?" it will be
   asked. Once again, the answer lies in the idea of trusting nature. The
   concept of "mine" and "yours" is adult, and children naturally develop
   it as they become mature, but not before. This means that normal
   children will "steal" -- though that is not how they regard it. They
   are simply trying to satisfy their acquisitive impulses; or, if they
   are with friends, their desire for adventure. In a society so
   thoroughly steeping in the idea of respect for property as ours, it is
   no doubt difficult for parents to resist societal pressure to punish
   children for "stealing." The reward for such trust, however, will be a
   child who grows into a healthy adolescent who respects the possessions
   of others, not out of a cowardly fear of punishment but from his or her
   own self-nature.

J.6.5 But how can children learn ethics if they are not given punishments,
prohibitions, and religious instruction?

   Most parents believe that, besides taking care of their child's
   physical needs, the teaching of ethical/moral values is their main
   responsibility and that without such teaching the child will grow up to
   be a "little wild animal" who acts on every whim, with no consideration
   for others. This idea arises mainly from the fact that most people in
   our society believe, at least passively, that human beings are
   naturally bad and that unless they are "trained" to be good they will
   be lazy, mean, violent, or even murderous. This, of course, is
   essentially the idea of "original sin." Because of its widespread
   acceptance, nearly all adults believe that it is their job to "improve"
   children.

   According to libertarian psychologists, however, there is no original
   sin. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that there is "original
   virtue." As we have seen, Reich found that externally imposed,
   compulsive morality actually causes immoral behaviour by creating cruel
   and perverse "secondary drives." Neill puts it this way: "I find that
   when I smash the moral instruction a bad boy has received, he becomes a
   good boy." [Summerhill, p. 250]

   Unconscious acceptance of some form of the idea of original sin is, as
   mentioned previously, the main recruiting tool of organised religions,
   as people who believe they are born "sinners" feel a strong sense of
   guilt and need for redemption. Therefore Neill advises parents to
   "eliminate any need for redemption, by telling the child that he is
   born good -- not born bad." This will help keep them from falling under
   the influence of life-denying religions, which are inimical to the
   growth of a healthy character structure.

   As Reich points out, "The Church, because of its influence on the
   sexuality of youth, is an institution that exerts an extremely damaging
   effect on health." [Children of the Future, p. 217] Citing ethnological
   studies, he notes the following:

     "Among those primitive peoples who lead satisfactory, unimpaired
     sexual lives, there is no sexual crime, no sexual perversion, no
     sexual brutality between man and woman; rape is unthinkable because
     it is unnecessary in their society. Their sexual activity flows in
     normal, well-ordered channels which would fill any cleric with
     indignation and fear, because the pale, ascetic youth and the
     gossiping, child-beating woman do not exist in these primitive
     societies. They love the human body and take pleasure in their
     sexuality. They do not understand why young men and women should not
     enjoy their sexuality. But when their lives are invaded by the
     ascetic, hypocritical morass and by the Church, which bring them
     'culture' along with exploitation, alcohol, and syphilis, they begin
     to suffer the same wretchedness as ourselves. They begin to lead
     'moral' lives, i.e. to suppress their sexuality, and from then on
     they decline more and more into a state of sexual distress, which is
     the result of sexual suppression. At the same time, they become
     sexually dangerous; murders of spouses, sexual diseases, and crimes
     of all sorts start to appear." [Ibid., p. 193]

   Such crimes in our society would be greatly reduced if libertarian
   child rearing practices were widely followed. These are obviously
   important considerations for anarchists, who are frequently asked to
   explain how crime can be prevented in an anarchist society. The answer
   is that if people are not suppressed during childhood there will be far
   less crime, because the secondary-drive structure that leads to
   anti-social behaviour of all kinds will not be created in the first
   place. In other words, the solution to the so-called crime problem is
   not more police, more laws, or a return to the disciplinarianism of
   "traditional family values," as conservatives claim, but depends mainly
   on getting rid of such values.

   There are other problems as well with the moralism taught by organised
   religions. One danger is making the child a hater. "If a child is
   taught that certain things are sinful, his love of life must be changed
   to hate. When children are free, they never think of another child as
   being a sinner." [Neill, Op. Cit., p. 245] From the idea that certain
   people are sinners, it is a short step to the idea that certain classes
   or races of people are more "sinful" than others, leading to prejudice,
   discrimination, and persecution of minorities as an outlet for
   repressed anger and sadistic drives -- drives that are created in the
   first place by moralistic training during early childhood. Once again,
   the relevance for anarchism is obvious.

   A further danger of religious instruction is the development of a fear
   of life. "Religion to a child most always means only fear. God is a
   mighty man with holes in his eyelids: He can see you wherever you are.
   To a child, this often means that God can see what is being done under
   the bedclothes. And to introduce fear into a child's life is the worst
   of all crimes. Forever the child says nay to life; forever he is an
   inferior; forever a coward." [Ibid., p. 246] People who have been
   threatened with fear of an afterlife in hell can never be entirely free
   of neurotic anxiety about security in this life. In turn, such people
   become easy targets of ruling-class propaganda that plays upon their
   material insecurity, e.g. the rationalisation of imperialistic wars as
   necessary to "preserve jobs" (cited, for example, by US Secretary of
   State James Baker as one rationale for the Gulf War).

J.6.6 But how will a free child ever learn unselfishness?

   Another common objection to self-regulation is that children can only
   be taught to be unselfish through punishment and admonition. Again,
   however, such a view comes from a distrust of nature and is part of the
   common attitude that nature is mere "raw material" to be shaped by
   human beings according to their own wishes. The libertarian attitude is
   that unselfishness develops at the proper time -- which is not during
   childhood. Children are primarily egoists, generally until the
   beginning of puberty, and until then they usually don't have the
   ability to identify with others. Thus:

     "To ask a child to be unselfish is wrong. Every child is an egoist
     and the world belongs to him. When he has an apple, his one wish is
     to eat that apple. The chief result of mother's encouraging him to
     share it with his little brother is to make him hate the little
     brother. Altruism comes later -- comes naturally -- if the child is
     not taught to be unselfish. It probably never comes at all if the
     child has been forced to be unselfish. By suppressing the child's
     selfishness, the mother is fixing that selfishness forever." [Neill,
     Op. Cit., pp. 250-251]

   Unfulfilled wishes (like all "unfinished business") live on in the
   unconscious. Hence children who are pressured too hard - "taught" - to
   be unselfish will, while conforming outwardly with parental demands,
   unconsciously repress part of their real, selfish wishes, and these
   repressed infantile desires will make the person selfish (and possibly
   neurotic) throughout life. Moreover, telling children that what they
   want to do is "wrong" or "bad" is equivalent to teaching them to hate
   themselves, and it is a well-known principle of psychology that people
   who do not love themselves cannot love others. Thus moral instruction,
   although it aims to develop altruism and love for others, is actually
   self-defeating, having just the opposite result.

   Moreover, such attempts to produce "unselfish" children (and so adults)
   actually works against developing the individuality of the child and
   their abilities to develop their own abilities (in particular their
   ability of critical thought). As Erich Fromm puts it, "[n]ot to be
   selfish implies not to do what one wishes, to give up one's own wishes
   for the sake of those in authority. . . Aside from its obvious
   implication, it means 'don't love yourself,' 'don't be yourself', but
   submit yourself to something more important than yourself, to an
   outside power or its internalisation, 'duty.' 'Don't be selfish'
   becomes one of the most powerful ideological tools in suppressing
   spontaneity and the free development of personality. Under the pressure
   of this slogan one is asked for every sacrifice and for complete
   submission: only those acts are 'unselfish' which do not serve the
   individual but somebody or something outside himself." [Man for
   Himself, p. 127]

   While such "unselfishness" is ideal for creating "model citizens" and
   willing wage slaves, it is not conducive for creating anarchists or
   even developing individuality. Little wonder Bakunin celebrated the
   urge to rebel and saw it as the key to human progress! Fromm goes on to
   note that selfishness and self-love, "far from being identical, are
   actually opposites" and that "selfish persons are incapable of loving
   others. . . [or] loving themselves..." [Op. Cit., p. 131] Individuals
   who do not love themselves, and so others, will be more willing to
   submit themselves to hierarchy than those who do love themselves and
   are concerned for their own, and others, welfare. Thus the
   contradictory nature of capitalism, with its contradictory appeals to
   selfish and unselfish behaviour, can be understood as being based upon
   lack of self-love, a lack which is promoted in childhood and one which
   libertarians should be aware of and combat.

   Indeed, much of the urge to "teach children unselfishness" is actually
   an expression of adults' will to power. Whenever parents feel the urge
   to impose directives on their children, they would be wise to ask
   themselves whether the impulse comes from their own power drive or
   their own selfishness. For, since our culture strongly conditions us to
   seek power over others, what could be more convenient than having a
   small, weak person at hand who cannot resist one's will to power?
   Instead of issuing directives, libertarians believe in letting social
   behaviour develop naturally, which it will do after other people's
   opinions becomes important to the child. As Neill points out, "Everyone
   seeks the good opinion of his neighbours. Unless other forces push him
   into unsocial behaviour, a child will naturally want to do that which
   will cause him to be well-regarded, but this desire to please others
   develops at a certain stage in his growth. The attempt by parents and
   teachers to artificially accelerate this stage does the child
   irreparable damage." [Neill, Op. Cit., p. 256]

   Therefore, parents should allow children to be "selfish" and
   "ungiving", free to follow their own childish interests throughout
   their childhood. And when their individual interests clash with social
   interests (e.g. the opinion of the neighbours), the individual
   interests should take precedence. Every interpersonal conflict of
   interest should be grounds for a lesson in dignity on one side and
   consideration on the other. Only by this process can a child develop
   their individuality. By so doing they will come to recognise the
   individuality of others and this is the first step in developing
   ethical concepts (which rest upon mutual respect for others and their
   individuality).

J.6.7 Isn't what you call "libertarian child-rearing" just another name for
spoiling the child?

   No. This objection confuses the distinction between freedom and
   license. To raise a child in freedom does not mean letting him or her
   walk all over you; it does not mean never saying "no." It is true that
   free children are not subjected to punishment, irrational authority, or
   moralistic admonitions, but they are not "free" to violate the rights
   of others. As Neill puts it, "in the disciplined home, the children
   have no rights. In the spoiled home, they have all the rights. The
   proper home is one in which children and adults have equal rights." Or
   again, "To let a child have his own way, or do what he wants to at
   another's expense, is bad for the child. It creates a spoiled child,
   and the spoiled child is a bad citizen." [Summerhill, p. 107, 167]

   There will inevitably be conflicts of will between parents and
   children, and the healthy way to resolve them is to come to some sort
   of a compromise agreement. The unhealthy ways are either to resort to
   authoritarian discipline or to spoil the child by allowing it to have
   all the social rights. Libertarian psychologists argue that no harm is
   done to children by insisting on one's individual rights, but that the
   harm comes from moralism, i.e. when one introduces the concepts of
   right and wrong or words like "naughty," "bad," or "dirty," which
   produce guilt.

   Therefore it should not be thought that free children are free to "do
   as they please." Freedom means doing what one likes so long as it
   doesn't infringe on the freedom of others. Thus there is a big
   difference between compelling a child to stop throwing stones at others
   and compelling him or her to learn geometry. Throwing stones infringes
   on others' rights, but learning geometry involves only the child. The
   same goes for forcing children to eat with a fork instead of their
   fingers; to say "please" and "thank you;" to tidy up their rooms, and
   so on. Bad manners and untidiness may be annoying to adults, but they
   are not a violation of adults' rights. One could, of course, define an
   adult "right" to be free of annoyance from anything one's child does,
   but this would simply be a license for authoritarianism, emptying the
   concept of children's rights of all content.

   As mentioned, giving children freedom does not mean allowing them to
   endanger themselves physically. For example, a sick child should not be
   asked to decide whether he wants to go outdoors or take his prescribed
   medicine, nor a run-down and overtired child whether she wants to go to
   bed. But the imposition of such forms of necessary authority is
   compatible with the idea that children should be given as much
   responsibility as they can handle at their particular age. For only in
   this way can they develop self-assurance. And again, it is important
   for parents to examine their own motives when deciding how much
   responsibility to give their child. Parents who insist on choosing
   their children's' clothes for them, for example, are generally worried
   that little Tommy might select clothes that would reflect badly on his
   parents' social standing.

   As for those who equate "discipline" in the home with "obedience," the
   latter is usually required of a child to satisfy the adults' desire for
   power. Self-regulation means that there are no power games being played
   with children, no loud voice saying "You'll do it because I say so, or
   else!" But, although this irrational, power-seeking kind of authority
   is absent in the libertarian home, there still remains what can be
   called a kind of "authority," namely adult protection, care, and
   responsibility, as well as the insistence on one's own rights. As Neill
   observes, "Such authority sometimes demands obedience but at other
   times gives obedience. Thus I can say to my daughter, 'You can't bring
   that mud and water into our parlour.' That's no more than her saying to
   me, 'Get out of my room, Daddy. I don't want you here now,' a wish that
   I, of course, obey without a word" [Op. Cit., p. 156]. Therefore there
   will still be "discipline" in the libertarian home, but it will be of
   the kind that protects the individual rights of each family member.

   Raising children in freedom also does not imply giving them a lot of
   toys, money, and so on. Reichians have argued that children should not
   be given everything they ask for and that it is better to give them too
   little than too much. Under constant bombardment by commercial
   advertising campaigns, parents today generally tend to give their
   children far too much, with the result that the children stop
   appreciating gifts and rarely value any of their possessions. This same
   applies to money, which, if given in excess, can be detrimental to
   children's' creativity and play life. If children are not given too
   many toys, they will derive creative joy out of making their own toys
   out of whatever free materials are at hand -- a joy of which they are
   robbed by overindulgence. Psychologists point out that parents who give
   too many presents are often trying to compensate for giving too little
   love.

   There is less danger in rewarding children than there is in punishing
   them, but rewards can still undermine a child's morale. This is
   because, firstly, rewards are superfluous and in fact often decrease
   motivation and creativity, as several psychological studies have shown
   (see section [6]I.4.10). Creative people work for the pleasure of
   creating; monetary interests are not central (or necessary) to the
   creative process. Secondly, rewards send the wrong message, namely,
   that doing the deed for which the reward is offered is not worth doing
   for its own sake and the pleasure associated with productive, creative
   activity. And thirdly, rewards tend to reinforce the worst aspects of
   the competitive system, leading to the attitude that money is the only
   thing which can motivate people to do the work that needs doing in
   society.

   These are just a few of the considerations that enter into the
   distinction between spoiling children and raising them in freedom. In
   reality, it is the punishment and fear of a disciplinarian home that
   spoils children in the most literal sense, by destroying their
   childhood happiness and creating warped personalities. As adults, the
   victims of disciplinarianism will generally be burdened with one or
   more anti-social secondary drives such as sadism, destructive urges,
   greed, sexual perversions, etc., as well as repressed rage and fear.
   The presence of such impulses just below the surface of consciousness
   causes anxiety, which is automatically defended against by layers of
   rigid muscular armouring, which leaves the person stiff, frustrated,
   bitter, and burdened with feelings of inner emptiness. In such a
   condition, people easily fall victim to the capitalist gospel of
   super-consumption, which promises that money will enable them to fill
   the inner void by purchasing commodities -- a promise that, of course,
   is hollow.

   The neurotically armoured person also tends to look for scapegoats on
   whom to blame his or her frustration and anxiety and against whom
   repressed rage can be vented. Reactionary politicians know very well
   how to direct such impulses against minorities or "hostile nations"
   with propaganda designed to serve the interests of the ruling elite.
   Most importantly, however, the respect for authority combined with
   sadistic impulses which is acquired from a disciplinarian upbringing
   typically produces a submissive/authoritarian personality -- a man or
   woman who blindly follows the orders of "superiors" while at the same
   time desiring to exercise authority on "subordinates," whether in the
   family, the state bureaucracy, or the corporation. In this way, the
   "traditional" (e.g., authoritarian, disciplinarian, patriarchal) family
   is the necessary foundation for authoritarian civilisation, reproducing
   it and its attendant social evils from generation to generation. Irving
   Staub's Roots of Evil includes interviews of imprisoned SS men, who, in
   the course of extensive interviews (meant to determine how ostensibly
   "normal" people could perform acts of untold ruthlessness and violence)
   revealed that they overwhelmingly came from authoritarian,
   disciplinarian homes.

J.6.8 What is the anarchist position on teenage sexual liberation?

   One of the biggest problems of adolescence is sexual suppression by
   parents and society in general. The teenage years are the time when
   sexual energy is at its height. Why, then, the absurd demand that
   teenagers "wait until marriage," or at least until leaving home, before
   becoming sexually active? Why are there laws on the books in "advanced"
   countries like the United States that allow a 19-year-old "boy" who
   makes love with his 17-year-old girlfriend, with her full consent, to
   be arrested by the girl's parents (!) for "statutory rape?"

   To answer such questions, let us recall that the ruling class is not
   interested in encouraging mass tendencies toward democracy and
   independence and pleasure not derived from commodities but instead
   supports whatever contributes to mass submissiveness, docility,
   dependence, helplessness, and respect for authority -- traits that
   perpetuate the hierarchies on which ruling-class power and privileges
   depend.

   We have noted earlier that, because sex is the most intense form of
   pleasure (one of the most prominent contributors for intimacy and
   bonding people) and involves the bioenergy of the body and emotions,
   repression of sexuality is the most powerful means of psychologically
   crippling people and giving them a submissive/authoritarian character
   structure (as well as alienating people from each other). As Reich
   observes, such a character is composed of a mixture of "sexual
   impotence, helplessness, a need for attachments, a nostalgia for a
   leader, fear of authority, timidity, and mysticism." As he also points
   out, "people structured in this manner are incapable of democracy. All
   attempts to build up or maintain genuine democratically directed
   organisations come to grief when they encounter these character
   structures. They form the psychological soil of the masses in which
   dictatorial strivings and bureaucratic tendencies of democratically
   elected leaders can develop. . . . [Sexual suppression] produces the
   authority-fearing, life-fearing vassal, and thus constantly creates new
   possibilities whereby a handful of men in power can rule the masses."
   [The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-Regulating Character Structure,
   p. 82, emphasis added]

   No doubt most members of the ruling elite are not fully conscious that
   their own power and privileges depend on the mass perpetuation of
   sex-negative attitudes. Nevertheless, they unconsciously sense it.
   Sexual freedom is the most basic and powerful kind, and every
   conservative or reactionary instinctively shudders at the thought of
   the "social chaos" it would unleash -- that is, the rebellious,
   authority-defying type of character it would nourish. This is why
   "family values," and "religion" (i.e. discipline and compulsive sexual
   morality) are the mainstays of the conservative/reactionary agenda.
   Thus it is crucially important for anarchists to address every aspect
   of sexual suppression in society. And this means affirming the right of
   adolescents to an unrestricted sex life.

   There are numerous arguments for teenage sexual liberation. For
   example, many teen suicides could be prevented by removing the
   restrictions on adolescent sexuality. This becomes clear from
   ethnological studies of sexually unrepressive "primitive" peoples.
   Thus:

     "All reports, whether by missionaries or scholars, with or without
     the proper indignation about the 'moral depravity' of 'savages,'
     state that the puberty rites of adolescents lead them immediately
     into a sexual life; that some of these primitive societies lay great
     emphasis on sexual pleasure; that the puberty rite is an important
     social event; that some primitive peoples not only do not hinder the
     sexual life of adolescents but encourage it is every way, as, for
     instance, by arranging for community houses in which the adolescents
     settle at the start of puberty in order to be able to enjoy sexual
     intercourse. Even in those primitive societies in which the
     institution of strict monogamous marriage exists, adolescents are
     given complete freedom to enjoy sexual intercourse from the
     beginning of puberty to marriage. None of these reports contains any
     indication of sexual misery or suicide by adolescents suffering from
     unrequited love (although the latter does of course occur). The
     contradiction between sexual maturity and the absence of genital
     sexual gratification is non-existent." [Ibid., p. 85]

   Teenage sexual repression is also closely connected with crime. If
   there are hundreds of teenagers in a neighbourhood who have no place to
   pursue intimate sexual relationships, they will do it in dark corners,
   in cars or vans, etc., always on the alert and anxious lest someone
   discover them. Under such conditions, full gratification is impossible,
   leading to a build-up of tension, frustration and stagnation of
   bioenergy (sexual stasis). Thus they feel unsatisfied, disturb each
   other, become jealous and angry, get into fights, turn to drugs as a
   substitute for a satisfying sex life, vandalise property to let off
   "steam" (repressed rage), or even murder someone. As Reich notes,
   "juvenile delinquency is the visible expression of the subterranean
   sexual crisis in the lives of children and adolescents. And it may be
   predicted that no society will ever succeed in solving this problem,
   the problem of juvenile psychopathology, unless that society can muster
   the courage and acquire the knowledge to regulate the sexual life of
   its children and adolescents in a sex-affirmative manner." [Ibid., p.
   271]

   For these reasons, it is clear that a solution to the "gang problem"
   also depends on adolescent sexual liberation. We are not suggesting, of
   course, that gangs themselves suppress sexual activity. Indeed, one of
   their main attractions to teens is undoubtedly the hope of more
   opportunities for sex as a gang member. However, gangs' typical
   obsessiveness with the promiscuous, pornographic, sadistic, and other
   "dark" aspects of sex shows that by the time children reach the gang
   age they have already developed unhealthy secondary drives due to the
   generally sex-negative and repressive environment in which they have
   grown up. The expression of such drives is not what anarchists mean by
   "sexual freedom." Rather, anarchist proposals for teenage liberation
   are based on the premise that unrestricted sexuality in early childhood
   is the necessary condition for a healthy sexual freedom in adolescence.

   Applying these insights to our own society, it is clear that teenagers
   should not only have ample access to a private room where they can be
   undisturbed with their sexual partners, but that parents should
   actively encourage such behaviour for the sake of their child's health
   and happiness (while, of course, encouraging the knowledge and use of
   contraceptives and safe sex in general as well as respect for the other
   person involved in the relationship). This last point (of respecting
   others) is essential. As Maurice Brinton points out, attempts at sexual
   liberation will encounter two kinds of responses from established
   society - direct opposition and attempts at recuperation. The second
   response takes the form of "first alienating and reifying sexuality,
   and then of frenetically exploiting this empty shell for commercial
   ends. As modern youth breaks out of the dual stranglehold of the
   authoritarian patriarchal family it encounters a projected image of
   free sexuality which is in fact a manipulatory distortion of it." This
   can be seen from the use of sex in advertising to the successful
   development of sex into a major consumer industry.

   However, such a development is the opposite of the healthy sexuality
   desired by anarchists. This is because "sex is presented as something
   to be consumed. But the sexual instinct differs from certain other
   instincts... [as it can be satisfied only by] another human being,
   capable of thinking, acting, suffering. The alienation of sexuality
   under the conditions of modern capitalism is very much part of the
   general alienating process, in which people are converted into objects
   (in this case, objects of sexual consumption) and relationships are
   drained of human content. Undiscriminating, compulsive sexual activity,
   is not sexual freedom - although it may sometimes be a preparation for
   it (which repressive morality can never be). The illusion that
   alienated sex is sexual freedom constitutes yet another obstacle on the
   road to total emancipation. Sexual freedom implies a realisation and
   understanding of the autonomy of others." [The Irrational in Politics,
   p. 60, p. 61]

   Therefore, anarchists see teenage sexual liberation as a means of
   developing free individuals as well as reducing the evil effects of
   sexual repression (which, we must note, also helps dehumanise
   individuals by encouraging the objectification of others, and in a
   patriarchal society, particularly of women).

J.6.9 But isn't this concern with teenage sexual liberation just a distraction
from issues that should be of more concern to anarchists, like restructuring the
economy?

   It would be insulting to teenagers to suggest that sexual freedom is,
   or should be, their only concern. Many teens have a well-developed
   social conscience and are keenly interested in problems of economic
   exploitation, poverty, social breakdown, environmental degradation, and
   the like.

   However, it is essential for anarchists to guard against the attitude
   typically found in Marxist-Leninist parties that spontaneous
   discussions about the sexual problems of youth are a "diversion from
   the class struggle." Such an attitude is economistic (not to mention
   covertly ascetic), because it is based on the premise that the economy
   must be the focus of all revolutionary efforts toward social change. No
   doubt restructuring the economy is important, but without mass sexual
   liberation no working class revolution be complete. In a so called free
   society, there will not be enough people around with the character
   structures necessary to create a lasting worker-controlled economy --
   i.e. people who are capable of accepting freedom with responsibility.
   Instead, the attempt to force the creation of such an economy without
   preparing the necessary psychological soil for its growth will lead to
   a quick reversion to some new form of hierarchy and exploitation.

   Moreover, for most teenagers, breaking free from the sexual suppression
   that threatens to cripple them psychologically is a major issue in
   their lives. For this reason, not many of them are likely to be
   attracted to the anarchist "freedom" movement if its exponents limit
   themselves to dry discussions of surplus value, alienated labour, and
   so forth. Instead, addressing sexual questions and problems must be
   integrated into a multi-faceted attack on the total system of
   domination. Teens should feel confident that anarchists are on the side
   of sexual pleasure and are not revolutionary ascetics demanding
   self-denial for the "sake of the revolution." Rather, it should be
   stressed that the capacity for full sexual enjoyment is the an
   essential part of the revolution. Indeed, "incessant questioning and
   challenge to authority on the subject of sex and of the compulsive
   family can only complement the questioning and challenge to authority
   in other areas (for instance on the subject of who is to dominate the
   work process - or the purpose of work itself). Both challenges stress
   the autonomy of individuals and their domination of over important
   aspects of their lives. Both expose the alienated concepts which pass
   for rationality and which govern so much of our thinking and behaviour.
   The task of the conscious revolutionary is to make both challenges
   explicit, to point out their deeply subversive content, and to explain
   their inter-relation." [Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 62]

   We noted previously that in pre-patriarchal society, which rests on the
   social order of primitive communism, children have complete sexual
   freedom and that the idea of childhood asceticism develops as
   matricentric clan societies turn toward patriarchy in the economy and
   social structure (see section [7]B.1.5). This sea-change in social
   attitudes toward childhood sexuality allows the authority-oriented
   character structure to develop instead of the formerly
   non-authoritarian ones. Ethnological research has shown that in
   pre-patriarchal societies, the general nature of work life in the
   collective corresponds with the free sexuality of children and
   adolescents -- that is, there are no rules coercing children and
   adolescents into specific forms of sexual life, and this creates the
   psychological basis for voluntary integration into the collective and
   voluntary discipline in work. This historical fact supports the premise
   that widespread sex-positive attitudes are a necessary condition of a
   viable libertarian socialism.

   Psychology also clearly shows that every impediment to infantile and
   adolescent sexuality by parents, teachers, or administrative
   authorities must be stopped. As anarchists, our preferred way of doing
   so is by direct action. Thus we should encourage teens to feel that
   they have every chance of building their own lives. This will certainly
   not be an obstacle to or a distraction from their involvement in the
   anarchist movement. On the contrary, if they can gradually solve the
   problem of (e.g.) private rooms themselves, they will work on other
   social projects with greatly increased pleasure and concentration. For,
   contrary to Freud, Reichian psychologists argue that beyond a certain
   point, excess sexual energy cannot be sublimated in work or any other
   purposeful activity but actually disturbs work by making the person
   restless and prone to fantasies, thus hindering concentration.

   Besides engaging in direct action, anarchists can also support legal
   protection of infantile and adolescent sexuality (repeal of the insane
   statutory rape laws would be one example), just as they support
   legislation that protects workers' right to strike, family leave, and
   so forth. However, as Reich observes, "under no circumstances will the
   new order of sexual life be established by the decree of a central
   authority." [Ibid., p. 279] That was a Leninist illusion. Rather, it
   will be established from the bottom up, by the gradual process of ever
   more widespread dissemination of knowledge about the adverse personal
   and social effects of sexual suppression, which will lead to mass
   acceptance of libertarian child-rearing and educational methods.

   A society in which people are capable of sexual happiness will be one
   where they prefer to "make love, not war," and so will provide the best
   guarantee for the general security. Then the anarchist project of
   restructuring the economic and political systems will proceed
   spontaneously, based on a spirit of joy rather than hatred and revenge.
   Only then can it be defended against reactionary threats, because the
   majority will be on the side of freedom and capable of using it
   responsibly, rather than unconsciously longing for an authoritarian
   father-figure to tell them what to do.

   Therefore, concern and action upon teenage sexual liberation (or child
   rearing in general or libertarian education) is a key part of social
   struggle and change. In no way can it be considered a "distraction"
   from "important" political and economic issues as some "serious"
   revolutionaries like to claim. As Martha A. Ackelsberg notes (in
   relation to the practical work done by the Mujeres Libres group during
   the Spanish Revolution):

     "Respecting children and educating them well was vitally important
     to the process of revolutionary change. Ignorance made people
     particularly vulnerable to oppression and suffering. More
     importantly, education prepared people for social life.
     Authoritarian schools (or families), based upon fear, prepared
     people to be submissive to an authoritarian government [or within a
     capitalist workplace]. Different schools and families would be
     necessary to prepare people to live in a society without
     domination." [Free Women of Spain, p. 133]

References

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   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB1.html#secb15
