Noah Berlatsky, writer for The Atlantic, took to Twitter this week to give his (unbiased) opinion on parenting and the “endemic parent/child relationship”.

there are things you can do to try to minimize the abuse that's endemic to the parent/child relationship, but it's always there.

— Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) December 14, 2020

Take it from the guy who wrote about Wonder Woman, bondage and feminism. Parenting is the pits. Of course there was pushback and Berlatsky did not like this.

Parents are charged with indoctrinating children into an abusive and unjust society. How do they do that? in part by teaching them to stay in their place and accept injustice without question. again, these are not particularly new insights. does anyone read shulamith (sic) firestone?
If someone had the right to beat you unconscious, imprison you for using a cell phone, prevent you from going to college, prevent you from seeing friends…you’d see that as tyrannical, even if they didn’t do any of those things. and rightly so.”-Noah Berlatsky

There are some crackpots who actually agreed with Berlatsky:

Nobody needs to be a parent. They create children for their own gratification and it does not benefit the children. Parents expose their children to abuse and work just because they wanted sexual satisfaction or economic incentives. Many parents just traumatise their children.

— 森魔女子 (@MahimikoUmbral) December 15, 2020

Yep. All of us parents only procreate for our own gratification. Take that from a self-identified “lesbian trans female”. Parenting does not benefit children. We are slave-drivers and make our kids work soooo hard. And all we wanted was that child credit. That’s the only reason we put a child on this earth. What is failing our youth? Parenting is. The root of all evil lies within one’s mother and father. How dare we teach our children to know their place. How dare we exercise boundaries with them! We have been wronging our children all along, you see. How can I repent when I have failed my teenage son so miserably?

Do people just not know how kids are treated? Parents routinely prevent children from speaking to friends, leaving the house, identifying as queer. parents regularly hit kids and emotionally abuse them. The mechanics of the family and of capitalism are not separable.”-Noah Berlatsky

There it is. Family and Capitalism go hand-in-hand. Yay for Marxism and disbanding of the family unit. No more pater or mater. We have the village to raise this child. Bonus points of our child goes to see the family with the virtue-signaling lawn sign and spends his days there. We parental units are figures of oppression. I’d venture to argue that the only figures keeping kids from leaving the house right now are the governors in some of our states. Guess that leaves us mothers and fathers to our own devices and “indoctrinating” our kids.

The sad truth is that Berlatsky does not see the difference between beating a child senseless and “imprisoning” a child for use of a cell phone. The so-called “parents” who beat their kids senseless are NOT parents. They are merely vessels and I feel for these children because they will grow up with a distorted view on the family unit. If nothing else, these kids need love from friends with good parents. Berlatsky, while defining parenthood as being the key to the oppression of children, does not even address the concept of abortion. No, the unborn do not get a say in this matter. The parents-to-be are exercising their “freedom” and not oppressing or stifling another heartbeat in this case, are they? A non-issue in this argument, apparently.

Noah Berlatsky has entered the room, all. And he’s here to tell us that we are doing it wrong. I am such a bad parent for asking my son to scoop the poop out of our cats’ litter boxes. Call me Joan Crawford. And how dare I tell him to say “please” and “thank you”, brush his teeth and wear deodorant like he’s my prisoner. And, man, oh, man. I should have let him go and hang out with that friend back in third grade whose father had a known stash of pornographic material in the household. I prevented him from seeing a friend. And, damn. I should have encouraged the friendships between those boys who would go behind the school (when school was in session) and smoke pot. I, the Capitalist, have unjustly imprisoned and repressed my child. How dare I tell him that he needs to be competitive, work hard and get good grades if he wants to go to medical school. I should just give him the free will to coast. I’m oppressing him. He can be anything he wants to be. If he can think Johns Hopkins, he can do it. So, who needs a cap on the electronics usage during the week? How ever will I forgive myself for turning my home into a prison? Maybe because I want to contribute to society and not raise a child who becomes a grown-ass adult who acts like this? Just throwing out a spitball here.

Thank you, Noah Berlatsky, for empowering We, the parents everywhere. Yeah, our kids don’t have to listen to us, their oppressors. But they also don’t have to listen to you guys, either. Now excuse me for a moment. I need to be Wonder Woman and ask my able-bodied-man-child-slave to take out the trash.