The Theory of State Ownership of Children

An AI narration of the article 'The Theory of State Ownership of Children' by Jake Desyllas.

Who owns a child? One long-running answer, older than the modern state and still very much alive, is: the State does. On this theory parents are not the child's natural guardians but an obstacle — a rival authority that cannot be trusted to raise loyal citizens, and whose influence must therefore be diluted or removed. Jake Desyllas traces the idea from Plato and Aristotle, through Rousseau and the French Revolutionaries, to Hegel, the American Progressives, and the founders of sociology, and shows that it survives intact in contemporary political philosophy — where theorists openly write to advise the State on what parents should be permitted to do with their own children. The quotations are the argument: read in their own words, the advocates of State ownership are remarkably candid about what they want.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
0:58 Antiquity
1:39 Rousseau and the Revolution
2:56 The Modern State

First published at https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2025/4/7/the-theory-of-state-ownership-of-children on 7 April 2025.