https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Want-true-equity-California-should-force-parents-16777540.php

Opinion: Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their
children

If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require
parents to give away their children.

Today's Californians often hold up equity-- the idea of a just society
completely free from bias-- as our greatest value. Gov. Gavin Newsom says he
makes decisions through "an equity lens". Institutions from dance ensembles to
tech companies have publicly pledged themselves to equity, along with
diversity and inclusion.

But their promises of newly equitable systems are no match for the power of
parents.

Fathers and mothers with greater wealth, education or other resources are more
likely to transfer these advantages to their children, compounding privilege
over generations. As a result, children of less advantaged parents face an
uphill struggle, social mobility has stalled and democracy has been corrupted.
More Californians are giving up on the dream; a recent Public Policy Institute
of California poll found declining belief in the notion that you can get ahead
through hard work.

My solution is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can
act now: The rich should give their children to the poor, and the poor should
give their children to the rich. Homeowners might swap children with their
homeless neighbors.

Now, I recognize that some naysayers, hopelessly attached to their privilege,
will dismiss such a policy as ghastly, even totalitarian, but my proposal is
quite modest, a fusion of traditional philosophy and today's most common
political obsessions.

In his "Republic", Plato adopted Socrates' sage advice-- that children "be
possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or any
child his parents"-- in order to defeat nepotism, prevent the amassing of
great fortunes and create citizens loyal not to their sons but to society. To
replace parents, Plato offered now-familiar ideas, from compulsory education
to-- a millennia before Newsom's conception-to-college agenda-- health regimes
for pregnant women and children age 5 and younger.

Today, universal orphanhood aligns with powerful social trends that point to
less interest in family. Californians are slower to marry and are having fewer
children-- our state's birth rate is at an all-time low. Surveys also suggest
many of us are breaking off ties with family members who don't share our
politics. But my proposal would be unifying, fitting hand-in-glove with the
most cherished policies of progressives and Trumpians alike.

The left's introduction of anti-racism and gender identity in schools faces a
bitter backlash from parents. Ending parenthood would end the backlash,
helping dismantle white supremacy and outdated gender norms.

My proposal also would give Democrats the opportunity to build a new pillar of
the social democracy they seek-- a system for raising children, called "Foster
Care for All". Under this system, Democrats could stop pretending that they
will enact universal preschool or child care, which they've promised-- and
failed to deliver-- for a generation.

Over on the right, you'll see people posing as parent defenders, but
Republicans are happy to jettison fathers and mothers to pursue their greatest
passions, like violating migrant rights. Once you've gone so far as to
separate immigrants from their children and put the kids in border
concentration camps, it's only a short walk to a wholesale separation of all
Americans from their progeny.

Then there's the pro-lifers. The idea of universal orphanhood dovetails nicely
with the conservative campaign to end Roe v. Wade and all abortion rights. In
fact, a suggestion from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a recent Supreme Court
hearing on a case that could overturn Roe, inspired me to write this column.
She posited that abortion rights are no longer necessary because all 50 states
now have "safe haven" laws that allow women to turn their babies over to a
fire or police department after birth. My proposal would merely make mandatory
such handovers of babies to the state.

Perhaps such coercion sounds dystopian but just imagine the solidarity that
universal orphanhood would create. Wouldn't children, raised in one system,
find it easier to collaborate on climate change and other global problems?

Now, I don't expect universal support for universal orphanhood. A few
contrarians, lost in the empty chasm between American extremes, might object
to this rational proposal on emotional grounds. They might argue that pursuing
your own conception of family is fundamental to freedom. Or that our
differences and biases, for all the damage they can do, also give human life
much of its meaning.

They also may suggest that people don't really want to start or finish at the
same point in life. They may even say that what we really desire is what the
title orphan of the musical ANNIE insisted upon: "I didn't want to be just
another orphan, Mr. Warbucks. I wanted to believe I was special."

But you shouldn't pay those critics any mind because they just can't see how
our relentless pursuit of equity might birth a brave new world.

On 1/18/2022 8:17 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>
> https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Want-true-equity-California-should-force-parents-16777540.php
>
> Opinion: Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their
> children

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