Solidarity with Children

“Immediately canonical—requisite reading for any theorist writing in the field. It vividly articulates the precept that the bourgeois family is a privative force that limits collective possibilities for caring for one another.”—Sarah Brouillette, Protean “Solidarity with Children picks up discussions of family abolition and asks how this abolition can liberate children alongside women and those repressed by the patriarchal structures of family. I enthusiastically embrace Lane-McKinley’s radical vision for co-authorship alongside children for our utopian liberatory futures.”—Kate Bugos, Full Stop “Lane-McKinley brings in expansive readings from the Black feminist tradition and Wages for Housework to argue for radically changing what it means to mother.”—Adora Svitak, Blind Field“In a world that weaponizes the ideal of childhood, not least against children themselves, Lane-McKinley reveals how adult supremacy inflicts violence—from genocidal colonialism to the repressive halls of school. Rejecting mere protection and unsettling the bounds of childhood and adulthood, this book is a demand for a revolutionary solidarity with children through building a world of communal care. It draws on past and present activism to illuminate the radical politics that would empower children to become political subjects capable of mounting struggles in a world of climate catastrophe, economic crisis, and global war. Unflinching and visionary, Solidarity with Children is an indispensable guide for anyone committed to transforming the world.” —Anne Boyer“As a sixty-something-year-old former child who knew I was trans but couldn’t do anything about it back then, I’m proud to stand in solidarity with young people today who still need emancipation from a social construction of childhood that denies their agency and ability to know their own best interests. Madeline Lane-McKinley’s important book makes clear just how high the stakes are.”—Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution“This extraordinary book changed me, and still reverberates in my mind. Its stunning, clear-eyed, breathtaking clarity is a call to arms for us all.”—Noreen Masud, author of A Flat Place

Madeline Lane-McKinley is a feminist writer, parent, and teacher based in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times and Dear Z, the coauthor of Fag/Hag, and an editor for Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Post-45 Contemporaries, and Protean Magazine.