Carissa Conti (@Carissa_Conti)

Intermittently I've done posts dealing with the whole child exploitation issue happening in this world. To put it mildly. On the flip end of the spectrum let's take a look at another subject that I have passionate feelings about - the total infantalization of Westernized youth over the past ~25 years or so. Let's start out taking a look at what my dad's youth was like. Born in 1949 in Manhattan, NYC, to parents who were also native New Yorkers. He spent his youth in the 50s running around in the streets of NYC, playing stickball and baseball with his friends, jumping off the Palisades cliffs to swim in the polluted Hudson, getting the shit kicked out of him at home by his psychotically abusive dad who was literally throwing him across the room into walls as a small boy (until my grandma divorced him when my dad was 10, due to his ongoing affair with another woman....just following in the footsteps of his own [Italian immigrant] serial cheater dad......and a pattern my dad would later repeat....] getting the shit kicked out of him by nuns at the Paraochial school that he attended until 8th grade....and hopping freight trains out of the city.......at like 10 years old. O.o Expert freight train hopper as a kid. Lost his virginity at 15 to the 30-something woman in the neighborhood who had a thing for fucking teen guys, and worked her way through every single one in the neighborhood; was playing in multiple local high school rock bands as the guitarist or drummer, drinking hardcore (including the time he passed out on the train tracks on his way home at around 17, then crawled his way to the front door of his mom's covered in his own vomit, where his mom found him and yanked him inside and tossed him in the shower fully clothed); getting into fights left and right, and just banging as many girls as he could get before he even graduated. All the while during high school also raising his three younger half siblings from his mom's second marriage, with the help from his sister Lynn. Feeding them, changing diapers, giving them baths, cleaning the entire house until 1 in the morning, the entire works, because his mom (my grandma) refused to get out of bed and do anything, while his step dad was out working as a blue collar, low wage bus driver. (It's why when his own firstborn happened - me - he was a total old pro at dealing with babies and young children. Knew his way around that shit like nobody's business.) Bus drivers don't make bank. So that means there was never enough food in the house. As the oldest male he was always forced to eat last. Which meant by the time things got around to him there was often no food left, so he just went without. Which is why, between the lack of food and smoking cigarettes since a kid and crazy, hell raising lifestyle he was skinny as a rail. So that's a good basis of comparison of what "kids" back in the day were going through. But it doesn't even compare to what kids before him in NYC were contending with. Working in factories for at least 12 hours a day....at 5, 6, 7 years old. Running wild in the streets, with cigs hanging out of their mouths like old men. Trying to join the military to fight in WWI and WWII, as young teens. Etc. Then we flash forward to the present day. Where 16 and 17 year old dudes are being referred to as "CHILDREN!!!" This is a MAJOR next level pet peeve of mine. I am so sick of the infantalization that's taken place in the past few decades to try to stunt people to the level of helpless, useless, small children. And you can't discuss it anywhere on mainstream 'net sites without being labeled as some advocate of pedophilia. O.o !!! I'm coming from a place of just straight up understanding what my dad went through - and was capable of - at such a young age. And then watching what my little brother was capable of by the time he was 10. Words have meaning, and we'll get back to the use of the word "children" in a moment. (Continued in attached comment 👇👇👇)