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jesse's avatar

I was on board with pieces of this, but it's the same that I see in pretty much every article of this type in that there is zero consideration of power. Parent-child relationships are fundamentally unequal; parents are in a position of power over children's lives and emotions in a way that is incomparable to any other relationship we will ever have throughout our lives. It is reasonable to hold parents, like any authority, to a higher standard than those whose entire lives are supremely governed by them, if only because the level of harm they can do from that position of total control is extreme and non-reciprocal. If that is the cultural change going on, that we are no longer interested in capitulating to authorities who demand grace and loyalty as a matter of course, I think that paradigm shift is a very good thing.

It's also very strange to me to describe families as "sacred" in a context where you are supposed to be a therapist working from the evidence of relational needs, not vibes. There is significantly more going on with American loneliness than parental estrangement, which seems suspicious to leave out. You say that people have a right to leave their crappy families if they decide that's necessary but offer zero examples of what exactly drives children to stop speaking to their parents that you think is unfair. You say we need "wisdom" but who exactly is supposed to be apologizing, here? This is all very vague and seems designed to soothe the feelings of parents who think their children owe them devotion, which is a whole cottage industry unto itself now.

Edit: Hold on. So according to your instagram, you're not actually a therapist, you're an intern. It's phrased in a vague way to sound like you've got a license, but presumably you can't legally call yourself a CPC/LPC/LCPC or you would list those actual licensing credentials. What you do have is an instagram with 135k followers where you post literally nothing but "parental estragement" complaining & family-cohesion promo posts. So this truly is just, that exact cottage industry doing what it does. Fantastic. At least the last name is unironic now.

edit2: a freakish number of people have liked this comment so i guess if you want to see more talk about power dynamics, family, gender, etc check out my substack or whatever, i do write about this stuff at length & not in the context of dunking on a specific professional-managerial-class grifter selling evangelical half-truths in the guise of empathy for troubled parents

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Steven Howard's avatar

A fantastic article. One that gets to the heart of what is going on in our society and not just the destruction of family, although that is surely one of the key targets. Those doubting what is going on might take a look at the Frankfurt School and post modernist movements' takeover of the education system, starting at Columbia University in the 1930-1950 period. In the Commonwealth nations, we have the Fabians operating much the same ideological program. End goal is state/corporate totalitarian control (fascism by another name) and to get that they need to replace the family with the all powerful State—digital ids, CBDCs and tokenisation of everything are stages on the path.

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