In a Nutshell

CL is an old-world child-rearing practice, outmoded by the swing of western civilization in the throes of a bureaucratic authority (where the state has assumed the essential functions), that survives through the charitable actions of independent agents (CLs) standing in opposition with, or at least parallel to, mainstream "decadence" and western cultural practices in child guidance. All too much is made of the cultural constructs separating children from humanity (childhood "innocence"), and such idealizations have done nothing to benefit actual living children, so the CL advocates recognizing a child as a whole individual--the good, the bad, and everything mental and physical about them.

It is an idealistic "love doctrine" standing in opposition to cultural and social modes of child subjection, control, abuse, and over-protectionism, that stresses being responsible for a child over simply "having" responsibility, good works over legislation, on a pretext of "do no harm." All too often what is there to protect children chokes them of a nurturing development, and should be regarded with the same disdain as child molestation itself. CL takes nothing material for itself, for it is primarily motivated aesthetically, spiritually, biologically and socially, and is given with genuine charity rather than flimsy officialness.

The essential belief is that human beings are social, children develop in a social world, and that modern society is and has been systematically cutting off a child's ability to form an intimate, positive, social relationship with the world around them and the people in it after decades of sensationalist paranoia, over-liability and protectionism, and sentimental pleas over common sense. CLs see their work as a slow rebuild of humanity in its children, essentially getting back those primitive human-to-human bonds between adult and child in a modern social context. It is an adult and child spending time together for no other reason than the fact that they are benefiting from each other.

Because both the child and the adult in this relationship stand in contrast with cultural practices, they run into conflict with its basic tenets (political correctness, nanny state policies...etc.), and are therefore often ridiculed. Because of this social ridicule, CLs feel they are better able to relate to a child, an entity also put upon by adult decadence and narrow-mindedness. The CL is truly a man of the past living in the present, walking in the future.