Political theorists have largely ignored the place of “the child” in politics and children as political actors in their own right. This adults-only orientation and failure to take children’s political lives seriously also reflect the field’s persistent anti-feminism: the dominant frames of the discipline too often bundle and sideline “women and children” together. In Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action, Penny A. Weiss recovers a history of feminist treatises, essays, manifestos, and fiction as it pertains to children. Weiss’s feminist political theory thus departs from the tradition of feminist rereadings of the canon of largely male thinkers—see, for example, Susan Moller Okin’s Women in Western Political Thought (1979), Carole Pateman’s The Sexual Contract (1988), or Weiss’s own book on Rousseau, Gendered Community (1993)—and elevates the sharp political and social analyses of feminist writers that mainstream political theory continues to ignore. In this sense, it is dispositionally closer to Emma Goldman (2011) by Kathy Ferguson, Lori Marso’s Politics with Beauvoir (2017), or Eileen Hunt’s book, Mary Shelley and the Rights of the Child (2017). But it is also a survey, rather than an extended reading of one author. Weiss weaves together classic feminist texts with those less well known (especially in political theory) to interrogate the category of the child and centers children’s voice and well-being as a feminist project. Clearly the result of decades of thinking about and working at the intersection of feminism and childhood, Feminist Reflections on Childhood will interest students of feminism, political theory, public policy (child welfare), human rights, and childhood studies. The bibliography alone demands attention and gratitude.

The central argument of Feminist Reflections is that feminism has a rich and diverse history that supports children’s flourishing and well-being. This is a quietly radical claim, because it challenges routine attacks on feminism as anti-family and anti-child. In a subtle deflection, Weiss positions anti-feminism as the real culprit when it comes to harming families and children. Whether regarding parental and adult authority (“children should be seen and not heard” and “obedience above all else”), hostility toward the state’s involvement in child welfare and care, or young people’s sexuality, conservatives fear children’s voices and agency, and this makes for harmful customs and policies. Weiss’s feminists, by contrast, see children as complex humans in their own right, analyze the power relationship between unequal categories like “adult” and “child,” and have robust theories of women’s voice and representation that can and should be extended to youth.

An unstated but persistent theme in Feminist Reflections is Weiss’s appreciation for the insights of anarchist and socialist feminist writers and texts. Weiss organizes this book into four parts that showcase how children need a combination of anarchic freedom to develop freely and institutions informed by feminist commitments. In parts I and II, she deconstructs standard assumptions about child-rearing, such as the problem of “talking back,” and maps out the feminist case for finding one’s voice—however candid and “impolite” it might be. Part III provides close readings of feminist political and social texts that address the role and standing of children. It also includes an important chapter on Emma Goldman’s anarchist feminism and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s socialist feminism. Part IV brings feminist epistemology, disability theory, and queer theory to bear on the status of children as people whose lives have been dismissed and devalued; it closes with a study of feminist fiction that links broader social well-being to the well-being of children and emphasizes how fighting for humane and dignified conditions for young people is a feminist project.

Weiss thus provides new resources for feminist work on intergenerational relationships and communities. She writes, “Feminism has many distinctive tools with which to study and challenge the treatment and status of children,” especially with respect to the “silencing of, discrimination against, and exploitation of young people based on their age and such factors as sex, disability, and ethnicity; physical, emotional, and sexual violence against the young; the content, accessibility, and methods of education for democracy; and rights and opportunities to play, to contribute, and to have an adequate standard of living and a safe environment” (p. 103). Weiss’s work is therefore both intellectual and political: it connects and plumbs historical texts for insight into politics in the present. Feminism, as a social and political philosophy and a practice problematizing assumptions about power and knowledge, challenges mainstream views about children as irrational creatures for whom “father knows best.”

The problem with “father (or mother) knows best” also frames Weiss’s productive engagements with queer and disability studies, both of which contest standard paradigms of competence, maturity, and adulthood. This pairing helps Weiss turn the queer critique of child-focused politics—epitomized in Lee Edelman’s No Future (2004)—on its head by dignifying children as beings in their own right and not props for adults to perform their own reproductive capacity and immortality. “Nothing about us without us,” the disability rights mantra goes. Neither children nor people with disabilities deserve rights and voice because of some future horizon, but because they have insight into the circumstances that shape their lives. Weiss laments, “We so easily characterize the young/impaired as incompetent, unable to represent themselves or ideas in meaningful ways, and those older/healthier as always more knowledgeable and able to represent not only themselves but also others—dependents—accurately and in their interest. We are trained, it seems, to overlook the persistent and glaring exceptions and qualifications to this and to not see how social structures and settings (rather than abstract individual [in]competence) shape abilities, perceptions of abilities, and possibilities of participation” (p. 216). According to Weiss, healthy personal relationships and a healthy democracy demand that people are able to represent themselves to the greatest extent possible. Children know their circumstances, from poverty to intimate violence and the school-to-prison pipeline (p. 220). “Some of the gaps [in adult knowledge] can be filled simply by listening better to children,” Weiss emphasizes. “Adults … need epistemic humility” (p. 220). Imagine if USA Gymnastics had listened to girls’ early complaints about Dr. Larry Nassar. What assumptions about age, gender, sexuality, and authority prevented them from doing so?

As Weiss’s plea for adult humility indicates, the figure of the “adult” looms large in Feminist Reflections and sometimes operates as a catchall. In general, Weiss carefully attends to the differences among children and families and the particulars of adult and child experience as they connect to identities such as race, gender, and immigration status. But the context in which parents and other adults entrusted with childcare operate needs more attention. Unfortunately, some of the asides about adults who let their children spend too much time on iPads (p. 46), do not appreciate the wonder of childhood, and expect obedience—and so on—come to obscure the nuance Weiss works hard to develop. I wish she had leaned on Gilman for some structural analysis and context, as she did with her discussion of disability studies. Absent meaningful parental leave, pathways to citizenship, childcare, health care, and sick leave, among other benefits that support parents and children, the “adults” are often stranded, powerless, and alone themselves.

One final and related point of criticism pertains to the “positive feminist values” (p. 288) that Weiss celebrates. Some readers will probably want more detailed accounts of how “positive feminist values” and feminist reforms have nonetheless harmed and neglected poor women, women of color, queer women, and others outside the Anglo and European traditions that capture most of Weiss’s attention. To be fair, Octavia Butler’s vision of a community in which racial “mixing and matching [are] normal” is prominent in Weiss’s chapter on utopian and dystopian feminist fiction (p. 280). Weiss also includes gender, race, and ethnicity in the category of childhood (pp. 7, 53) and explores the politics of feminists of color in the chapter on manifestos. But this is not yet a consistent or well-developed thread.

These criticisms aside, Weiss’s book is an important contribution to feminist political thought that speaks to our current political environment. Weiss provides an essential framework for making sense of twenty-first-century youth activism. She provides a philosophical justification for what political youth—many of whom are girls—already know: any polity that aspires to democratic values of equality and mutual respect must attend to the place and voice of young people. They are more than “the future”: they are thoughtful, knowledgeable, reflective, and sentient people who matter right now. Today.