30/09/2026
We can raise children who understand that consent is not merely the absence of the word “no.”
We can teach boys that masculinity does not require proving themselves to other boys through domination.
We can teach children that loyalty to a friend never requires participating in—or remaining silent about—someone else’s harm.
We can teach them that when everybody else is laughing, joining in, filming, sharing, encouraging, or looking away, you can be the person who stops it.
And then we have to build institutions that reinforce those lessons.
Structures where intervention is expected.
Where reporting harm does not require extraordinary courage.
Where adults take warning signs seriously.
Where organizations cannot quietly move dangerous behavior somewhere else.
Where accountability isn’t invented after something terrible happens but designed into the institution beforehand.
Prevention cannot just mean telling potential victims how to stay safe.
It has to mean changing the conditions under which people become perpetrators, accomplices, enablers, and silent witnesses.
That is harder work.
It is also profoundly hopeful work.
Because systems are not laws of nature.
We made them.
And that means we can make different ones.
Parenting is political because every day we are helping create the people who will eventually become somebody’s roommate, partner, fraternity brother, teammate, supervisor, teacher, administrator, juror, prosecutor, parent, and friend.
The question isn’t only whether we can raise children who would never participate in collective violence.
It is whether we can raise children who, when violence becomes possible around them, have the courage, skills, and expectation to break the collective.
And whether we are willing to build institutions that help them do it.