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What do parenting and abolition have in common? A lot, it seems, according to the contributors of We Grow the World Together. This anthology explores the intersections between caregiving and the dismantling of carceral systems that seek to police, punish and control. Rather than treating parenting as an apolitical endeavour, this collection of essays, brought together by abolitionists and organisers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson, seeks to link the daily work of raising children to the larger struggle to build a just and liberated society.
This book has a lot to offer. Its contributors, many of whom have personally encountered the US prison system, draw on their own lives and relationships with children, parents and caregivers to share the lessons they’ve learned. Erika Ray writes to her daughter from prison, reflecting on the Black feminist teachings she cherishes while longing to parent up close. D’Marria Monday recounts the grief she felt after being separated from her baby just months after giving birth, as well as the pain of witnessing other mothers living apart from their growing children. Holly Krig describes how experiencing incarceration while pregnant propelled her to co-found Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, transforming personal trauma into collective action.
This anthology offers many more essays that explore how parents and caregivers participate in activist movements, challenge heteronormative nuclear-family norms, and put abolitionist caregiving into practice by gently teaching their children about the violence that shapes the world around them. While I’m not a parent myself, I appreciated the vulnerability of those who voiced fears about raising children at a time when far-right politics are on the rise, the climate crisis intensifies, and wars rage – and the honesty about how that fear never fully disappears. It was wonderful to read that it is also their children who push them towards a more human future than we currently inhabit, one step at a time.
The parts of the book I found most interesting were those that questioned the assumption that policing keeps children safe, pointing instead to the ways policing often puts children and families in harm’s way. Beth E. Richie writes: “My worries about the safety of children – all children – are part of why I’m an abolitionist. Prison and police are violence against kids, from youth incarceration to parental imprisonment to the ensnaring of caregivers and children in systems like electronic monitoring, forced ‘treatment’ centres, group homes and migrant jails.” Dorothy Roberts builds on this by showing that the US child welfare system is rife with contradictions. “It pretends to be a benevolent saviour of children by terrorising their families… The system gets its power from the threat of taking children away.” She then goes on to show how the state has long wielded this specific weapon against marginalised communities, tracing its roots to colonial and racialised systems of control over Indigenous groups and enslaved people.
I enjoyed how much of the writing is grounded in lived experience, informed by local and global histories, and engaging in dialogue with the broader field of abolitionist feminist activism. However, I felt the book was at times limited by the essay-collection format. As distinct as the pieces are on their own, many began to feel similar when read consecutively, a pattern most noticeable at the beginning of the book. This is a common challenge with anthologies: the wide range of voices, styles, and levels of accessibility can make the reading experience uneven and raise questions about the book’s intended audience. Even so, it’s a small gripe, because the ideas at the heart of this work are undeniably worth putting into the world.
We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition by Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson. Haymarket Books, 2024. ISBN: 9798888902554
