We Have Forgotten Our Children
- mcoswalt
- 8 hours ago
- 6 min read
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In the early mornings here in the meadow, the grass glitters with dew, heavy, bowed. Beyond the path leading to the wood line, a keen eye might see the smallest of movements. A doe lifts her head from a nest of ferns where she left her spotted fawn, a fox trots home after a dawn hunt, a sow bear shows her cub how to nuzzle out the tender shoots. The wild animals here slinking through the bough-dappled light do not hesitate to protect and tend to their young. Every creature, from bear to bird, gently shelters and guides with a good instinct that points to perennial truths. The creatures of the wood raise their young with remarkable care, attention, and dignity.
Yet, beyond the wood line, in our wounded modern world, we have forgotten how to do the same for our own young children.
Over the past decade, we have experienced a profound hyper-focus on social justice. We have reframed dehumanizing language, deliberately designed spaces for marginalized groups, and viewed people holistically with a fierce protection. This all-encompassing social justice movement has rapidly changed our culture, transformed the physical world we inhabit, and shaped the way we communicate.
It has also quietly, blindly, tragically excluded our children.
Listen to conversations about children and you will hear dehumanizing terms. Carefully consider the next public place you visit and you will see we build spaces that ignore their small bodies. Read any media and note how we view them as not children, but as incomplete adults. This cultural neglect, this silent tragedy, this betrayal, haunts our shared humanity. It deepens our collective wound. We need to think hard about how our language, public spaces, and narratives fail our children, diminish their dignity, and erode the warmth of our collective life.
Our culture casually accepts dehumanizing language for young children, a practice tolerated in ways no other group endures. Terms like “brat,” “little tyrant,” or “animals” pepper parenting blogs, social media, and advertisements, framing children as chaotic nuisances rather than the vulnerable humans they are.
We do this easily, almost reflexively. The post pictured above was written by someone who is normally even-keel, considerate, who has raised children. The speaker is not an evil, malicious person, they are merely a victim of the dehumanizing culture that has so permeated our language and very minds. Contrast this instance of “unsocialized animals” written with ease, that went relatively unchallenged, with our cultural labor to retire and forbid terms like “thug” for black men or “hysteric” for women, driven by earnest and good social justice advocacy to honor a person’s inherent worth. For children, however, dehumanization is ambient, slipping by unexamined. You may not have noticed it until now just as a fish does not notice the water in which it swims it is so common. This betrays a culture that has drifted from the respect we have learned to give others, leaving our youngest outside the protective ideals we champion. It is a loss that echoes in our words. We should grieve this behavior, as it diminishes the vibrant humanity of our children. When we use dehumanizing language for any group, something deeply sinister happens: our willingness to neglect and even harm the targeted group becomes ever so slightly greater. Consider when we refer to children as “burdens.” We subconsciously frame them as liabilities, something from which to liberate ourselves. How about “mouths to feed”? You’ve heard it hundreds of times, and each time some part of your brain reduced children to mere consumers of resources. These are but standard examples said daily. There are infinitely more vulgar terms for children used which I will not write. Ultimately though, even the most innocuous slip of “brat” or “spawn” strips children of their humanity. It is the last acceptable language of dehumanization and that dehumanization subtly invites harm. Every atrocity in history started with this shift in language. We would do well to remember that.
Beyond the language we use to neglect a child’s humanity, we also neglect their physical being. Public spaces, particularly bathrooms, expose this neglect, designed for adult needs while treating young children as mere afterthoughts, their small bodies invisible in our plans. Most restrooms lack toddler-sized toilet seats, step stools for sinks, or changing tables, forcing parents into awkward, often undignified improvisation. Considering the ease and affordability of 2-in-1 potty training toilet seats and stools, there are some extremely easy wins to be had for those who own any sort of public venue with a modicum of will.
We prioritize inclusive designs for other groups: wheelchair ramps, braille signage, gender-neutral stalls. To not have a stall accessible to a person in a wheelchair would be unthinkable for a restaurant or library, yet we shrug when a child cannot sit on the toilet without falling in. It is clear we, as a culture, value social justice commitments to accessibility and dignity yet we do not have the will to extend this justice to children. Why? These adult-centric spaces, cold, unwelcoming, unreachable, assume children’s needs are temporary, unworthy of the care we extend to others. Their presence is but an inconvenience in a world built for adults. This oversight, rooted in seeing children as not yet whole, sidelines them from our vision of a shared, inclusive world, a loss etched, screaming in the very bricks and pavestones of our architecture.
Our most haunting failure however is our cultural narrative of young children as “incomplete adults,” raw material to mold rather than whole beings with rights deserving of dignity now. Parenting media, children’s books, and campaigns fixate on what children will become, overshadowing their present humanity. Raising Good Humans Every Day (2024) by Hunter Clarke-Fields offers “mindful practices” to shape toddlers into “future successes,” with chapters like “Building Your Child’s Future Self” that prioritize adult traits over present emotions (Amazon reviews, 2024). The Wonderful Things You Will Be (2024 edition) by Emily Winfield Martin imagines what children “will be” (brave, wise, kind) while rarely celebrating who they are now. A 2025 parenting podcast, Good Inside with Dr. Becky, framed preschoolers’ tantrums as “obstacles to future resilience.” These media, though well-meaning, reflect our collective unease with children’s impulsive, emotional now, casting them instead as potential simply waiting to be shaped. We are no strangers to affirmation however. The last two decades saw fierce advocacy for affirming present identities for adults especially related to race or gender. We celebrate adults for who they are. We see children as seeds, however, only ever viewing them as the people they will be. This is a lamentable lens that fades the child’s vibrant today, denying them the dignity we champion for others. This narrative overlooks young children’s full humanity, valuing only their distant tomorrow, a loss that dims our collective heart.
In the woods just past the meadow where my daughter plays, the animals continue to honor their young. A doe does not ask what her fawn will become before shielding it, a bear sow does not wait for her cub to prove its worth before teaching it, a vixen is incapable of viewing her kits as anything but what they presently are. These animals, guided by instinct, by the good green pattern of the natural world, nurture their young with fierce, present care, a lesson our sophisticated culture has forgotten. We have championed social protections like reframing language, building inclusive spaces, and honoring one’s present identity, but in our fervor we have left the children behind, tolerating dehumanizing terms like “brat,” designing spaces that exclude their small bodies, and seeing them as incomplete adults instead of whole people. This neglect shapes our norms, spaces, and stories, eroding children’s place in our shared life and diminishing something vital and good in all of us. We must change how we speak, build, and see. Stop laughing at “tiny tyrants,” build sinks for six-year-old hands, and honor children as whole now, as we do others.
Imagine a world where our words uplift children, our spaces welcome them, and our stories celebrate their present humanity.
Imagine our collective wounds healing.
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This essay was originally published on Ryan's Substack, Old Hollow Tree, and has been republished with his approval here.
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