Solidarity with Children - by Madeline Lane-McKinley (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A revolutionary feminist case for child liberation, a utopian project that helps us imagine ways to build insurgent, collective forms of care.

We live in a world that is profoundly against children-evident in the genocide in Palestine, the fascist targeting of trans children, and the blatant disregard for the lives of migrant children crossing borders and oceans. It is a world in which climate catastrophe has become the new normal, in which children's futures are by no means assured.

What we need, feminist writer and scholar Madeline Lane-McKinely argues, is a politics of solidarity with children, one that sees children as comrades in our struggle for a better future. Blending personal and political reflection with cultural analysis, Lane-McKinley examines the history of childhood as a system of private property in capitalism, showing how the idea of the child has been weaponized in the service of white supremacy and empire. She disentangles motherhood from the act of caregiving, tracing the possibilities of revolutionary mothering. And she critiques the parents' rights movement and imagines what education might look like outside schools, considering how we might center children as we challenge the strictures of the nuclear family.

Elegantly written and provocative, Solidarity with Children is a book for anyone who cares about children and the struggle for a better world.

Review Quotes

"Immediately canonical-requisite reading for any theorist writing in the field. It vividly articulates the precept that the bourgeois family is a privative force that limits collective possibilities for caring for one another." -Sarah Brouillette, Protean "Solidarity with Children picks up discussions of family abolition and asks how this abolition can liberate children alongside women and those repressed by the patriarchal structures of family. I enthusiastically embrace Lane-McKinley's radical vision for co-authorship alongside children for our utopian liberatory futures." -Kate Bugos, Full Stop "Lane-McKinley brings in expansive readings from the Black feminist tradition and Wages for Housework to argue for radically changing what it means to mother." -Adora Svitak, Blind Field
"In a world that weaponizes the ideal of childhood, not least against children themselves, Lane-McKinley reveals how adult supremacy inflicts violence-from genocidal colonialism to the repressive halls of school. Rejecting mere protection and unsettling the bounds of childhood and adulthood, this book is a demand for a revolutionary solidarity with children through building a world of communal care. It draws on past and present activism to illuminate the radical politics that would empower children to become political subjects capable of mounting struggles in a world of climate catastrophe, economic crisis, and global war. Unflinching and visionary, Solidarity with Children is an indispensable guide for anyone committed to transforming the world."
-Anne Boyer

"As a sixty-something-year-old former child who knew I was trans but couldn't do anything about it back then, I'm proud to stand in solidarity with young people today who still need emancipation from a social construction of childhood that denies their agency and ability to know their own best interests. Madeline Lane-McKinley's important book makes clear just how high the stakes are."
-Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution

"This extraordinary book changed me, and still reverberates in my mind. Its stunning, clear-eyed, breathtaking clarity is a call to arms for us all."
-Noreen Masud, author of A Flat Place

"Immediately canonical--requisite reading for any theorist writing in the field. It vividly articulates the precept that the bourgeois family is a privative force that limits collective possibilities for caring for one another." --Sarah Brouillette, Protean "Solidarity with Children picks up discussions of family abolition and asks how this abolition can liberate children alongside women and those repressed by the patriarchal structures of family. I enthusiastically embrace Lane-McKinley's radical vision for co-authorship alongside children for our utopian liberatory futures." --Kate Bugos, Full Stop "Lane-McKinley brings in expansive readings from the Black feminist tradition and Wages for Housework to argue for radically changing what it means to mother." --Adora Svitak, Blind Field
"In a world that weaponizes the ideal of childhood, not least against children themselves, Lane-McKinley reveals how adult supremacy inflicts violence--from genocidal colonialism to the repressive halls of school. Rejecting mere protection and unsettling the bounds of childhood and adulthood, this book is a demand for a revolutionary solidarity with children through building a world of communal care. It draws on past and present activism to illuminate the radical politics that would empower children to become political subjects capable of mounting struggles in a world of climate catastrophe, economic crisis, and global war. Unflinching and visionary, Solidarity with Children is an indispensable guide for anyone committed to transforming the world."
--Anne Boyer

"As a sixty-something-year-old former child who knew I was trans but couldn't do anything about it back then, I'm proud to stand in solidarity with young people today who still need emancipation from a social construction of childhood that denies their agency and ability to know their own best interests. Madeline Lane-McKinley's important book makes clear just how high the stakes are."
--Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution

"This extraordinary book changed me, and still reverberates in my mind. Its stunning, clear-eyed, breathtaking clarity is a call to arms for us all."
--Noreen Masud, author of A Flat Place

About the Author

Madeline Lane-McKinley is a feminist writer, parent, and teacher based in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times and Dear Z, the coauthor of Fag/Hag, and an editor for Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Post-45 Contemporaries, and Protean Magazine.