EPISODE 52: MADELINE LANE-MCKINLEY, AUTHOR, EDUCATOR, AND PARENT

If you’ve tuned into Top Rank over the last year, you may have noticed that we’ve been spending some time with the topics of mothering and parenting more broadly. This is not a new interest—we actually did a five-part episode series about birth work back in 2019—but now that we are both parents our entry point has shifted and sharpened. On this episode, we’ll be discussing a new book by Madeline Lane-McKinley, a feminist author, parent, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. “Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy,” which came out late last year, weaves personal experience and political analysis to examine the history of childhood as we know it and consider what it would mean to center children in how we design and inhabit the world. In our conversation with Madeline, we think critically about where our expectations of children (and childhood in general) come from, and how challenging our deepest norms requires truly understanding what we take for granted.