Children are born into a state of implicit debt.
Good parents forgive this debt. Bad parents expect it to be repaid, one way or another. The accepted currencies are varied and cryptic and might be mostly innocuous or they might be horrifically criminal.
Many families don’t realize that there is a debt until the child defaults on it somehow. That could be for any reason—the child simply fails to deliver on the parental investment by not adequately being the child they paid for.
“Inspiration porn” is a disability term, but I’m using it here because it’s appropriately provocative, and because the state of being a child is functionally a disability. A child who fails to be life-affirming and inspirational and to perform heartwarming innocence is breaking a contract, and adults are no longer obligated to uphold their own end and nurture the child. A child is a resource from which inspiration porn can be mined, or it is a kind of brood parasite.


















