ABSTRACT
Various features of the market system expose children to damage of a more subtle kind. The features include parenting behind walls, the nuclear family, the age cohort, discipline, competition, and comparison. Children can be "entrusted" with secrets, information that they are told to keep from strangers. In the historically most common version of the nuclear family, the father is absent from the home during the day. Children can observe only a limited range of adult activities, so they can not learn what they will need to know about adult life solely by observation and imitation. "Discipline" is such an essential feature of parenting in today's system that people take the need for it as natural. Children must somehow be prepared for the different challenges they might end up facing. Kids who live in a market system are thrown into competition with one another early in life. Many parents compare their kids' achievements to those of siblings and other children.
