In defense of parents

Contra Aella on chattel childhood Aella has a post where she argues that today's parents don't sufficiently respect the independence of their children:Every culture throughout history has justified the abuse of treating their children as property by arguing this is good for them and good for civilization. Kids need to learn this stuff to be functioning members of society! It’s good to learn discipline! You can’t have kids just sitting around playing video games all day! Not everyone is self-directed autodidacts!Sure, I know that argument. But hopefully if my parents had said to you “do you expect her to learn good morals if we spare the rod?” you would have said “have you even tried other methods?”It's a hard hitting piece, and it certainly makes me, and presumably other parents, feel uncomfortable.Unfortunately I don't actually see much of an alternative. Aella seems to think it's as easy as not treating your children as property: When I was very young, I remember adults treating me like I wasn’t a person, but this didn’t upset me quite as much as the fact that no adult seemed to remember what it was like to be a kid, or else they certainly would have taken my feelings much more seriously, like they did for other adults.I was terrified that I, too, would one day grow up and forget what it was like to be a child, and would also stop taking other children seriously. So I swore to myself I wouldn’t forget - I chose the phrase “Don’t forget, I’m a person!” and deliberately sent it up the chain across my older selves by regularly meditating on the phrase and the importance with which it was carried. I’m an adult now, but I have not forgotten what it was like to be a child.However Aella doesn't have any children, and I suspect that once she does she will discover that she ends up needing to discipline her children far more often than she expected.So I think it's worth going over the different reasons why I, as a parent of a 5,3, and 1 year old, can't just let my kids do w