I’ve been struggling to write lately, feeling the weight and burnout of six years of nonstop work on book censorship. This, paired with the reality of how much my own books have been targeted for this work, means that I can’t always show up at my sharpest or brightest. I can, however, show up knowing my 60% is still pretty good. That’s what this is–I keep running into something on social media and cannot stop thinking about it. This is my attempt to do a little untangling.

Thanks to the hijacking of social media by the right, I get served a lot of things that I deeply dislike and disagree with, no matter how fine-tuned my feed is. One genre that’s been in my algorithm for years but has gained even more ground lately is the video or photo carousel intended to guilt working mothers for needing–or simply wanting–a job.

It goes something like this:

• A conventionally attractive (white) person is speaking to the camera or their photo is the center of the image;

• They talk about all of the things that are hard about modern parenting: there’s never enough time in the day to do everything, you never feel successful at your work or as a parent, and boy, doesn’t that make you feel bad about it all?;

• The cost of daycare is astronomical. One child in full-time daycare over a year can be 50% or more of your income;

• Then, the turn: why would you pay a stranger to raise your kid when it offers no solutions to any of the challenges you face as a parent? Wouldn’t you rather spend the most precious and important years of your child’s life with them as a parent? You shouldn’t let a stranger have more time with them than you do.

This isn’t necessarily trad wife/life content, but it reflects contemporary conservative values. It tugs at the real cognitive and emotional challenges that plague working parents. I know how much guilt I feel about my kid being out of the house by 7 and not getting home until after 3. Before she began public school this fall, I was spending an entire paycheck each month on care, cutting out any number of other things that my family wanted or needed.

Content like this, no matter how attuned you are to it, pokes at the legitimate horrors of trying to “do it all” and the effect that it has on parents (primarily mothers) who know they have to choose between being good at their jobs or being good at parenting and ultimately, feeling like a failure in both arenas.

It’s the last part of this genre of content that I think about constantly. The language is intentional yet evasive; it forces an “us” vs. “them” not only between the parent and caregiver but also between the parent and child.

It also establishes who owns the title of “parent” in the endless push for “parental rights.”

By choosing or being forced to choose childcare, a “stranger” is raising your child while you work, presumably because you’re more interested in bettering yourself than being with the human you’ve created. It’s emotionally manipulative and intentionally void of the historical context of work. White women have been afforded the luxury of not working through their privileged status and class; it is not a luxury that most women of color have had.* In a time where inflation is skyrocketing, gas prices are $5 a gallon or more, and the cost of living far exceeds the typical paycheck, this emotional manipulation feels especially cruel. That’s not just because of how out of touch it is with the modern American reality. It’s because it speaks to something bigger: how the far right's values and agenda are only successful when we cut ourselves off from the world around us.

When we see everyone around us as a “stranger,” except the actual strangers who make our lives harder and more exhausting, while benefiting from it every step of the way.

I’m not saying anything new or groundbreaking. But when you see the threads, they weave directly into why it is these same people spend untold time and ungodly amounts of money focused on banning books in school and public libraries. It is of the same fabric that pushes for taxpayer money to be funneled into school voucher schemes, whereby the wealthy can continue to move out of the public sphere and into insulated spaces where their worldview is the only worldview. Degrade public institutions enough, and only schools with a specific curriculum will be available to educate the masses. The good news is that conservatives have successfully redirected public funds for public goods into their partisan pet project here. We know who benefits from these schools and who loses when public school funding is stolen. Soon, public options will be scarce, private options too costly even with vouchers for most people, and hey, those kids can just be educated at home by the parent who isn’t working.

Sound familiar?

In the past, when (primarily white) households could survive on one income and one parent could stay home with the child/ren, the work of parenting didn’t happen in isolation. There was a village–neighbors helping neighbors, communities where it was safe for kids to be outside and playing without their parent watching their every move, and third spaces where young people could congregate and be young people, without the expectation of cash being exchanged. That final piece has nearly entirely disappeared from American life, and with it, the communities and friendships that would develop in those shared public spaces.**

Here’s a potent visual: when you look at old houses–those built before, say, the 1970s or 1980s, when suburban McMansion sprawl and “trickle down” economics were the name of the game–you’re far more likely to see a front porch on them than you are to see a back deck. Since then, that’s reversed. There are far fewer front porches and far more decks and fences. The front porch was your entry into the public sphere, extending your home to the sidewalks and streets, where people passing by could see you, and you could see them. Back decks don’t do that.^

Encouraging one parent to step away from their presence in a space that isn’t their home to ensure their child isn’t being raised by a “stranger” is telling them to lock their front door, make sure they have on the Ring doorbell camera, tighten the blinds, and shut down opportunities to be in the world.

Contemporary child care and public school more broadly do more than provide a space for parents to drop off their kids so they can work. These are spaces where the youngest members of our society interact with the world around them and where they are nurtured as individuals. Children begin to form new relationships, test boundaries, and explore what it is to be an autonomous being. Care spaces serve as a substitute for third places and provide access to new ideas, different values, and fresh perspectives.

That is the unspoken danger of children being raised by “strangers” in the emotionally manipulative content these videos push. If the parent cannot dictate every moment of their child's day, they cannot exercise the control demanded in an authoritarian landscape. Thus, they do not earn the title of parent.^^ Children are property to be shaped and managed, not unique human beings with their own wants, needs, interests, and curiosities.

“Strangers” raising your kids is manipulative language used to demand that you, the adult, follow the commands of those who know best. That you bow to fascism, aligning your practices with the values leaders tell you to take.

“Strangers” are to be feared.

It’s the same tactic that book banners have used from the start. They’ve rallied around cries that they “do not coparent with the government,” demanding books they don’t like be removed and erased. And they’re right–they don’t coparent with the government. They want the government to do the entirety of the parenting for them by removing the books and silencing the voices those books represent. No need to explain to their child why it is they hate gay people or don’t believe Black lives matter when their kids will not encounter those beliefs in the public school or library.

What’s curious about this genre of content isn’t just the way it parallels the language and push to remove books from schools and to defund public institutions. It’s also that these videos never provide actual solutions to the problems stated. There is no solution to how a parent who leaves their job to protect their kids from the “strangers” raising them pays for more expensive milk; there is no solution for how those parents afford to purchase a home in a market where a starter home in the middle of nowhere in fixer-upper condition starts at a quarter of a million dollars, with an interest rate over 7%. Those problems aren’t problems for authoritarians. Remember–if only one parent was working in more households, the cost of goods would have to drop.

Enter the paternalism.

You have not earned the distinction of being a parent. You need the stern hand of authoritarianism to put you back in line.

These people demand that schools treat every student as if they were their student. They have the right to determine which books are appropriate for library shelves and every student–despite being strangers to most, if not all, of the community the school or library serves. They are the actual strangers you should fear your kids being raised by. “Parental rights” is a rallying cry meant only for a specific brand of parent unified under one ideology (and in their minds, it is universal–you’ve just failed to comply).

Their lists of naughty books, of books that make white kids “feel bad” about themselves, the abundant pornography tucked into (checks notes) books about the very kinds of human trafficking that they themselves have made documentaries and movements out of–this is them being the dangerous strangers they warn about.

They don’t want “strangers” raising your children. They don’t want you raising your children. They want to raise your children. They are parents. Everyone else is a “stranger.” Perhaps if you left your job so that your kid didn’t need to be raised by a “stranger,” you, too, could become a parent.

That’s some power.

One of the reasons early childcare is a target of the right isn’t just that it expands a child’s world. Early child care years–including preschool and kindergarten, when the time comes–are crucial periods of social emotional development. Remove children from places of social engagement, and you remove the ways they learn to navigate and negotiate relationships with others. Remove them from social engagement, and you erase their ability to learn that people have different needs, wants, and ways of seeking them out. That the world is complex, challenging, and uncomfortable, as much as it is fun, colorful, and exciting.

My daughter learned and thrived by leaving home from a young age. She built her first friendships–many still nurtured today–and our family built a village with other parents whom we know we can turn to in times of need and joy. Early child care taught my daughter to trust other adults as safe, as well as to trust her own instincts when they did not feel that way. Her ability to articulate those feelings of confusion or not feeling as safe as she wished matters. They are her learning to listen to her inner voice and to trust her body, learning to speak up when she needs support or validation.

A child leaving the home for the care of “strangers” benefits their adults beyond their role in the capitalist machine. I became a better, more conscientious mom because I recognized that I did not have the capacity or experience to provide her with what she needed to thrive in today’s world. The things she learns from her diverse peers, from a cohort of kids growing up with a generation of parents that differed from my own–she can only get those by being out of the house.

The time I paid for her to be cared for by “strangers?” It opened up a universe of benefits to her.

But what value would a group whose only goal is control–and whose current history is that of unhindered child exploitation–have in a child using their own voice, built and shaped by a community? One composed of “strangers” who become familiar, who become neighbors, not through fear and isolation but through shared spaces and experiences?

It is but another example of accusations being wrapped up in a neat package to hide how much they’re actually confessions. Authoritarians want your limited capacity spent on fearing your neighbors and hiding from the world around you so that they can do their work more easily. A tired and fearful populace is much easier to control.

Notes:

Parents have the right to choose where and how they educate their children, just as they can decide whether or not to send their child to childcare. There’s a difference between choice and access. Not every parent who would love to have care for their child can afford it, and that’s the real problem here, not the care itself (and, of course, care workers deserve to be paid so much more than they are).

And when it comes to choosing where and how a child is educated or cared for, this isn’t an attack on parents who choose alternate avenues for their kids nor who are in a position to not work. But it is a reminder that for some, homeschool is about nurturing insularity and singularity, rather than using that flexibility to show young people just how incredible and unique the world really is.

*Please read Mikki Kendall’s essay “Facets of Feminism“ in Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World.

**That isn’t to say these villages were diverse or representative of America’s broader makeup. I don’t want this to sound like an idealistic image that represented reality everywhere. But villages of neighbors who knew one another and who helped one another did exist.

Today, the village may be online for many, but it probably isn’t in your town or neighborhood Facebook group. Those have become extensions of the surveillance state. Of course, that’s exactly why videos and image carousels that inspired this piece thrive–it’s an extension of the panopticon.

^ If you’ve ever watched House Hunters, you know one of the most common complaints is how annoying it is to “see your neighbors” from your fenced-in backyard and deck, even if they’re separated by half an acre or more.

^^ But also, by not exerting all their energy to dictate everything to their children, those adults are not as easily manipulated by authoritarians.

Also, after the intro to this piece about feeling burned out and tired, I’ve also drafted a newsletter for next week. Saying the thing is sometimes what I know I need to do to get the thing I want to do done–energy or not.