City mice and country mice

Matt Yglesias has a post about the wrongheadedness behind the assumption that suburban living is somehow better for kids. Quick and to the point.
I don't know if he realizes it or not, but stuff like this needs to be said loud and clear. We are living in a society that is using "the kids" as a rhetorical tool to convey all sorts of reactionary ideas that can't be stated directly for fear of looking ignorant. However, state that something is good for "the kids" and deflect all criticism for your reactionary beliefs. In the case of the defense of suburbia, it's easier to say that it's for "the kids" than cop to wishing for the whiteness and conformity of the suburbs. I see this more than ever now that my boyfriend and I are trying to move back to the city after growing impatient with living in the bland outer limits of the city and having people criticize our decision by dancing around their true opinions of the city.
"The kids" are used to justify racist beliefs and the desire for conformity, but it extends beyond that. The most obvious way "the kids" functions as a subterfuge is in the area of adult sexual panic. Most homophobes I know justify their beliefs in the oppression of homosexuals by making vague arguments that if homosexuals are afforded equal rights, "the kids" will somehow be damaged. How is never explained, of course, because once "the kids" are invoked, all argument stops because no one wants to be the child-injuring bad guy.
Women are oppressed sexually due to child-protection lies, too. Beyond even just sexual oppression, all forms of sexism are now defined as child-protection. Cultural conservatives have set up and are constantly reinforcing a belief that when women gain, children suffer, even though the truth is usually just the opposite. So women shouldn't be equals in education or the workplace to protect "the kids", even though all evidence shows that the better women do the better their children do. Soon-to-be women are oppressed for their own good as well, as is evidenced by the way all-important contraception is withheld from teenage girls, condemning them to early motherhood for the good of their own childish selves.
Be careful anytime you hear arguments touting the protective benefits to the children or the kids of any policy. Odds are that it has little to nothing to do with any actual children and everything to do with creating a cover story for repressive social policy. Conservatives have gotten very good at using coded language to hide their aims, such as substituting "family values" for what most of us call the good old-fashioned patriarchy, and they have succeeded in making that valuable word "patriarchy" unspeakable in public. Now they want to take away any and all ability to discuss public policy rationally by introducing phantom children into the equation. Don't let it happen to you. Scoffaw at attempts to argue on behalf of the children. Ask which and what children. Make them give concrete, fact-based examples of actual injured children. Don't let up until they admit that they simply want to control adult behavior.