ABSTRACT
Schemes and philosophies of child-rearing and education have proliferated among anarchists, for they have been especially concerned with how to raise freedom-loving and responsible individuals. State control of children was clearly anathema, but so was "community" involvement. Indeed, Benjamin Tucker went even further, arguing that children, at least those still too young to emancipate themselves, were really the property of their mothers. In particular, as owners, they could join in contracts for mutual defense of life, liberty, and property. The very idea of putting children "on a par with property" was offensive to the sympathies of civilized people, he said. Parents are not producers of their children in the same sense that they may consider themselves the producers of their handiwork or brain-work. Tucker's shift to a rigid property analysis of children was not immediately noticed, for John Badcock, Jr. wrote shortly after Tucker's article that even within a utilitarian framework, children should not be considered property.
