Trust Kids!

Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy

English language

Published Nov. 1, 2022 by AK Press Distribution.

ISBN:
9781849353854

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (1 review)

Trust Kids! weaves together essays, interviews, poems, and artwork from scholars, activists, and artists about our relationships with children in all areas of our lives.

The contributors of Trust Kids! write from different backgrounds, genders, ages, and sexualities and combine past lineages with more recent child-rearing ideas to offer a fresh, inspiring perspective. Many works on parenting and families wind up re-inscribing hierarchies by declaring how kids should be liberated. Trust Kids! insists on youth autonomy, listening to youth, and questioning adult supremacy on every page. At the heart of the book are conversations about all the ways that children can be included, loved, and cared for in more generative, just, and egalitarian ways. Its essays explore the liberatory potential of consent and autonomy in relationships among children, youth, and the adults in their lives. They also trace how oppressive attitudes toward children, far from being “natural” forms of kinship …

1 edition

"Solidarity begins at home."

5 stars

I started noticing parallels between unschooling/self-directed education and my values as an anarchist around the same time, when my now-teenager was "preschool" age. These ideas are so intertwined, each informing the other, always reminding me there are other ways of living in this world and interacting with people of all ages...especially children. There are few people I trust as much as carla joy bergman to put together a book like TRUST KIDS!, which explores how we can break down the hierarchies that keep children from experiencing autonomy and consent in all areas of their lives (not just in their education).

I wanted to race through this book—it's so down-to-earth and a joy to read! But each piece had so much to say—important points I wanted to make sure I took in fully. TRUST KIDS! features essays, interviews, poems, and artwork from scholars, activists, and artists of all kinds of backgrounds …