some evidence for parentism
December 11, 2009
A while back, I wrote a little bit on “parentism,” which I defined as “consisting in discriminating against people on account of their parental status, or in individual actions and attitudes or institutional arrangements that favor persons of a particular parental status unjustly.”
Here’s some evidence for the phenomenon: you can buy a box of kid paraphernalia for the purpose of convincing your coworkers that you have a kid and are therefore entitled an important perk of parenthood – skipping out of some work while looking sympathetic instead of like a deadbeat.
The ridiculous thing here is not that someone sells this kit, or that people buy it. What’s ridiculous is that it is even needed in the first place. Some people value things other than spawning. Shocking, I know. Please learn to respect this in the way that you want them to respect your life choices.
parentism: an example
July 5, 2009
What is parentism?
Parentism is a less discussed cousin of racism, sexism and classism. On my interpretation, parentism consists in discriminating against people on account of their parental status, or in individual actions and attitudes or institutional arrangements that favor persons of a particular parental status unjustly.
While surely there are cases wherein people are unjustly treated because they do have children, I am more interested in cases wherein people are unjustly treated because they don’t have children. Read the rest of this entry »
