by Jacob G. Hornberger

September 8, 2026

Karyann Parkinson has just been convicted by a Virginia judge of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” How did she supposedly do that? She let her 5-year-old son walk to a pond near their home in a gated community to collect goose feathers. An HOA security guard interrupted the kid’s quest, returned him to his mother, and called the cops. Parkinson was arrested and then convicted. The case raises important issues regarding parental rights, children’s rights, and the role of the state in matters relating to the welfare of children.

Rather than address the Parkinson case, however, I wish to confront what I consider is a much bigger problem regarding parent-child relations: the role of the American people as child-adults and the role of the federal government’s role as their daddy.

The federal daddy takes care of its child-adults, watches over them, forces them to share, prevents them from putting bad things into their mouths, and keeps them safe from the boogeyman. For their part, the American people have come to meekly — and even enthusiastically — accept their position in life as federal child-adults.

Consider the federal income tax, which was adopted in 1913. By wielding the power to set the percentage that people are required to pay, the federal government actually owns everyone’s income. Thus, the amount of income that the government permits people to keep is essentially an allowance, just like an allowance that a parent gives to his children. Sometimes the federal government is generous and lets people have a bigger allowance. Sometimes it’s mean and the allowance is less. But make no mistake about it: It’s an allowance that the federal daddy gives to his child-adults.

What happens if a child-adult throws a tantrum and decides to keep more of his own money? The IRS and Justice Department target him with harsh punishment. He is convicted and sent to his room in a federal penitentiary for several years.

Consider Social Security, Medicare, and other welfare. Americans are forced to share their allowance with their parents, the poor, and other needy people, such as farmers (subsidies), corporations (bailouts), and foreign regimes (foreign aid). The reason for this system of forced sharing is simply that child-adults cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Driven by the selfishness that characterizes many children, American child-adults simply will not voluntarily share what they have with others. Thus, they have to be forced to share a portion of their allowance with their parents, the poor, the needy, and the disadvantaged. In the process, federal officials teach the child-adults how to be caring, compassionate, good, and Christian-like.

Consider the drug war. If left free to consume drugs, American child-adults would be smoking dope, snorting cocaine, injecting heroin, and ingesting opioids. It would be the height of parental irresponsibility if the federal daddy left people free to decide for themselves what they choose to ingest. Legalizing drugs, which libertarians favor, would, in the mind of a statist, clearly constitute contributing to the delinquency of a child-adult.

What happens if a child-adult breaks the rules and is caught possessing or distributing illegal drugs? The federal daddy comes after him and punishes him as harshly as a parent punishes a child for eating candy without permission. The child-adult is sent to his room in a federal prison, often for several years of his life. He also has lots of his allowance taken away from him through fines.

Consider the national-security state, which wields omnipotent power over the American people, including the power to assassinate, torture, and incarcerate them without notice and trial. The child-adults have no objections to this omnipotent power because their federal daddy is protecting them and keeping them safe from Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Venezuela, Cuba, the terrorists, the Reds, the Muslims, the illegal immigrants, the drug dealers, and all the other boogeymen in the world.

It’s worth mentioning that our American ancestors in, say, 1890 had no income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, foreign aid, drug laws, or national-security state. They were adults, not child-adults. That was one of the things that made America the greatest nation in the world.

President Trump vowed to make America great again but, at the same time, keep the income-tax system, the welfare-state system, the drug-war system, and the national-security-state system intact. That’s an impossibility. There is no way that a nation of child-adults can be made great. A nation of child-adults will inevitably be a weak nation — one with a very powerful daddy — a daddy who sometimes becomes very angry, volatile, violent, and mean.