Children are the future. We can all agree on that point; the next generation is growing up as we speak, deciding what to do with their lives and how best to live them.
I’m watching family members having kids, learning how to be parents, figuring out how to keep the little ones safe and entertained while teaching them everything they need to know.
It’s a magical experience, truly. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a parent, myself, my husband and I go back and forth on it particularly with the health issues I have, but even if I never have kids I’ll be able to be the fun aunt who brings Canadian chocolate and cheers for accomplishments.
That’s the best part of being an aunt. I get to fill them up with sugar and then send them home to terrorize their parents. Cue the maniacal laughter!
I like kids, I see them every day at work as their parents bring them in for doctor visits and take them through the pharmacy. I see sick kids or kids with injuries coming in for medication and examination, and tiny youngsters coming in for their first shots.
I hate seeing them sad, but it’s nice to see their parents taking steps to ensure their kids are cared for and protected.
I just wish everyone had the same thought. But alas, certain people, particularly those in positions of power to the south of me, are bound and determined to strip protections and provisions away from children.
All the while, they scream that they’re the ones with their best interests in mind.
Down south in the U.S., the Republicans have always claimed to be the party of ‘protect the children.’
Lately, over the past decade or so, we’ve seen them lie about this.
They lie about it while they protect the abusers on Epstein’s client list. They lie about it as they strip labour protections from kids, pushing them further into the workforce at younger and younger ages. They lie about it as they change school curriculum, demonize their identities if they’re LGBTQ+, and they lie about it as they refuse them food.
School lunch debt is an especially horrifying concept to me.
We see the American right-wing across many states refusing to end child marriage and install strict ages of consent. We see Fox News extolling the virtues of young marriage and childbearing for teenage girls — even lamenting that the birth rate for teens is dropping, as if that’s a bad thing!
Refusing to terminate pregnancy in kids who have been abused is another horror to consider. When a girl is assaulted by an adult, there’s no reason to force her to risk her life in pregnancy and childbirth when she is, herself, just a child.
The fact that this genuinely happens now is disgusting.
Don’t get me started on how the poster child for the modern GOP is a man who makes sexual comments about his own daughter and bragged about walking into teen beauty pageants while the minor children were undressing.
He’s picked health officials who want to mess with the vaccine schedule for children, pushes bullshit claims about the ‘causes’ of neurodivergence and says horrible things about disabled people.
They cut USAID assistance for vulnerable populations around the globe, leaving millions of kids without medicine or food.
I could go on, but the bottom line is that the ‘party of protect the children’ doesn’t live up to the standards it preaches.
The Republicans aren’t good for kids. They clearly view them as property rather than people, extensions of the parents, and subject to their will without any rights or boundaries of their own.
Start talking about parents rights, LGBTQ+ rights and sex education for minors and see where the GOP lose their gods damned minds.
This is basic shit, people. They can’t stand it because it gives kids the language to understand themselves, their peers, and speak out when they’re abused or mistreated.
I’m sick of allowing them to pretend that their ‘family values’ nonsense is good for kids. I’m sick of them proposing laws to take kids away from their families for allowing them to explore their identities on their own terms, and criminalizing medical care.
I’m sick of seeing them lead parents down a road that distrusts science and leaves little ones vulnerable to diseases that, by rights, ought to be long gone and no longer a threat.
I’m so sad that this is the world my nieces and nephew are growing up in. I want better for them.
It breaks my heart.
Solidarity wins.