Ep. 17: Parenting with Nonviolence with Latinx Parenting
In this episode we talk with Leslie Arreola Hillenbrand and Lizeth Toscano of Latinx Parenting. Our conversation brought up so many topics including generational trauma, mother wounds, gender roles and more. We shared with our guests what their work has helped us to heal, create more conscious approaches with our children and our own parents that take into consideration our cultural values and the systemic power dynamics at play.
Our main takeaway from our conversation: Parenting with nonviolence creates a modality by which we can begin to see children as full human beings that need our love, compassion and guidance to see their full potential as individuals and equals. As Lizeth points out parenting models rooted in domination and violence come from colonization, “they don’t come from inherent goodness of our ancestry. Peaceful parenting was ours at one point. Because of slavery and racism our parents had to adapt to a cruel and hard world, and to make good children was to obey. [They thought] if I did not discipline my child, then the master was going to discipline my child.” In other words, domination was normalized through multiple colonial power constructs like racism, patriarchy, gender binaries as well as through the idea of the parent child relationship as hierarchical in nature. Domination is first normalized in the home between parent and child often using violence and abuse so that all other power dynamics rely on similar violent approaches in order to exhibit authority and maintain power. If we truly want to dismantle all structures of oppression, we must begin in the home by re-imagining the parent/child dynamic outside a paradigm of domination.
IG: @latinxparenting
