Re: The great irony for parental control advocates

"Could parental power exist in a system that didn't have a state?

The real rub is this: if the state ceased to exist, how would parents control their kids? If a youth is unhappy at home to the point that they want to run away, who currently forces these runaways to return to the home of their parents? The police, who are agents paid and empowered by the state. If the state no longer existed, who would force kids to return home if they chose to leave? I can see some of you saying that in the absence of the state the parents would simply grab shotguns and hunt the child down throughout the countryside, but what if the youth moved into a community of people who sympathized with their desire to leave the parents and had firepower of their own to match that of the irate parents? What then? How easy would it be for parents to retrieve their kids under such circumstances without the help of the state? Also, how could parents stop their kids from working if the youths in question chose to work without present day child labor laws enforced by the state? How could parents insure that their kids went to school every day if they wanted their kids to go to school when the youths in question didn't want to if the state agencies weren't enforcing this? After all, aren't truant officers also working for the state?

The fact of the matter is, parental control and ownership of kids almost certainly cannot exist without the state to enforce it. "

Have a look at societies where state does not exist and never has.

Hunter-gatherers all around the world, and part of the farmers. Eskimos, Bushmen, Australians etc.

There is strictly no state.

If a child runs away from its parents to go on hunting and gathering of its own... well, with less accumulated experience they are at a greater risk of dying of hunger than they would be with parents.

If a child moves into a "community of people who sympathized with their desire to leave the parents"... which one would it be? Another existing hunter-gatherer family? Well, what do they gain by supporting someone else´s child?

The child might find a family who is willing to accept an in-law - or servant, without carrying the cost of raising the servant. But the point is, its in-laws do not have quite the same interest in caring for outsider than its own parents had had. Other things being equal, they are likely to treat the outsider even worse than its parents did.

Eventually, at least one gender does move out of their birth family and settle elsewhere. New hunter-gatherer bands can be established, sometimes routinely.

But parental ownership of children is very real in the absence of state. Certainly there are many children who wish they could already be a parent of a prosperous band but know they cannot, and have to put up with their parents.