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Explore race, class, gender, disability, and collective liberation—and get support for initiating age-appropriate and engaging conversations with kids about social justice.

From Chapter 1: parenting for Social justice, by Angela berkfield

To better understand the need for social justice, it is important to understand the concepts of privilege and oppression. A privilege and oppression framework recognizes that oppression harms everyone, both those who are oppressed and those who have benefited from oppression. Oppression functions at the societal level, yet it shows up in our personal lives and results in negative feelings and in trauma. Guilt, shame, rage, internalized superiority, internalized inferiority, and hate are just some of the feelings that happen as a result of oppression. We often feel personally at fault for those feelings, but really the onus is on systemic oppression.

From chapter 6: Parenting for Gender Justice, by Leila Raven

As Black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins has written, the family is a crucial site of resistance against hierarchy. The nuclear family model normalizes and legitimizes hierarchical relationships and the conceptualization of power as dominance in our everyday lives and our society. Through nonhierarchical family structures, we can disrupt dominance culture in our everyday lives. Family can offer the opportunity to build, in microcosm, the world we want.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY

As a white cis- deaf mother of two children (age 11 DeafBlind and age 8 CODA, Child of Deaf Adult), navigating the world of parenthood can sometimes be a complex tangle of mass...or even mess. To me, the visceral need to support my young children in becoming more aware, empathic human beings in this world is immense. While I'm often unlearning, learning, and re-learning much of the information we were conditioned with while growing up (both consciously and unconsciously), I hope the process becomes easier for my children so that we can contribute to a more equal world for everyone. And often, I'm not sure how to help guide them through this process. Now, this amazing, thorough book is full of examples, dialogue, and tools. My biggest disappointment is that this book didn't come out when my children were younger! This is a must-read for every family pursuing social justice in their communities.

Marisa Soboleski, white cis- deaf mother of two children, age 11 (DeafBlind) and age 8 (CODA, Child of Deaf Adult), New Mexico