Hang on I'm not done with bad parenting in trek and how well it shines a light on the limitations of the 'utopian' future trek presents. There are a lot of bad parents in the trek universe, which at first seemed at odds to me with the more supposedly enlightened future trek of the federation. But the more I think of it the more I realise this pattern of bad parenting is actually a product of federation society, not an aberration.
While federation worlds are post-scarcity, they are not post-consumerism. While people don't need money, they still have a lot of personal property. They actually have a much more hyper-consumerist society than we have today because they can produce and discard things so much more quickly without any of the environmental, cost, or labour implications. Imagine how fast fast fashion would be if you could dream up an outfit every morning, it was created without destroying the planet or using child labour, and you didn't even have to store it because you could just recycle it at the end of the day.
This is of course the utopia that American TV writers would dream up. While there are socialist ideals in trek, it's very much a pipe dream of having your cake and eating it too - you stop inequality and destroying the planet but don't have to sacrifice any of your consumerist comfort or convenience.
Of course, this is a society that still has the nuclear family. Small family units who never want for anything - people could be full-time parents, or work if they choose to. Obviously we see a lot of outliers as we see the people who choose to leave paradise but I think it still represents the wider societal issues.
The nuclear family as a model often enables abuse as it gives parents a lot of power over children. It's also a model where children are effectively the property of their parents. So in a hyper-consumerist world where most property is used up and then discarded the second it is even remotely inconvenient, there is even more cultural potential for mistreatment than in our world.
You're used to using things up and discarding them with zero consequences (personal, financial, global) and all of a sudden you have a thing that culturally belongs to you, but you can't just discard it? It will have feelings and perspectives and rely on you. It will be, worst of all, imperfect. And it's yours, forever.
Even Harry Kim, who has ostensibly kind and loving parents, feels he has to earn their love. How could his parents love their (emphasis on possessive pronoun) so much if he wasn't perfect?
How do you even handle that? It's a miracle star trek characters aren't more fucked up.
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