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The Rights of Children
This topic was inevitable. Time for a battle between the old fogeys and the punk kids.
What rights should children have, and what responsibilities should they have? What rights should parents have, and what responsibilities should they have? Should these rights and responsibilities change? If they should, then how should they change, and under what circumstances?
What rights should children have, and what responsibilities should they have? What rights should parents have, and what responsibilities should they have? Should these rights and responsibilities change? If they should, then how should they change, and under what circumstances?
Comments
To have rights you must also bear the legal responsibility associated with those rights. Until you turn 18 (or are emancipated) your parents (or legal guardian) bear the responsibility of your actions.
Children are a protected class.
Young children often can't make sound decisions. What young child would go to school if he didn't have to?
One think I do know in black and white, though, is that age is not a true indicator of maturity.
If you want your child to live a certain way, you should raise them in a fashion that will result in them wanting to do those things. If you properly parent them, they will turn into responsible adults on their own, and you will never have to force them to make good decisions. If your child does not make good decisions, you should not be able to infringe upon their basic human rights as a form of punishment. If your children are indeed making poor decisions, and they refuse to listen to their parents advice, then let them suffer the consequences of their actions. They will learn their lesson faster by being forced to take personal responsibility for their own actions than by anything parents will do.
I think of parenting like gardening. If the plant doesn't grow the way you want, you can't fix it by locking it inside for a day, or denying it water. That only makes things worse across the board. You simply have to change your watering schedule, the type of food, or the amount of sunlight to get the plant to grow in a different direction. Mistakes made early in the growing process will have long, often irreparable, effects later on. That's just something you have to deal with.
I also think that any child who asks for emancipation should receive it unconditionally. However, the children must be made completely aware of what they are getting into. They have to be made to realize that they have basically decided, in most cases, to become homeless bums. They will be entire responsible for themselves and their actions in all ways. Their parents will no longer be obligated to provide anything for them. If a child is made fully aware of the consequences of becoming totally self-reliant, and they choose to do so anyway, that is their basic human right to be allowed to make that decision. If it was the wrong decision to make, they will find out soon enough.
Parents should be forced to take responsibility for the children they bring into the world, but that does not mean those children should not be granted the same rights as all other human beings. Just because they are new people does not mean they are lesser people. If any person decides that they would like to take their destiny into their own hands, that is a right that must be granted.
Obviously, "fairness" is out of the question for the following obvious reasons:
1. Children don't decide who their parents are.
2. Parents don't decide who their children are
As much as I'd like to take the parent side of the debate and say that kids should be forced to do what the parents with as long as the parents are feeding, clothing, and housing them, I won't. Ideally, kids should be able to up and leave whenever they wish as long as they understand that they're forfeiting their home. The problem is that our society isn't structured to be able to deal with such a situation primarily due to age-based laws such as child labour laws.
1. Freedom of speech.
2. Freedom of press.
3. Freedom of religion.
4. Right to assemble and petition.
5. Fair trial, due process, etc.
6. Freedom to travel.
7. Right to own property.
8. Right to an education.
9. Freedom from slavery/indentured servitude
10. Right to live.
11. Right to release parents from their obligation.
In addition, parents and guardians should have the following responsibilities and obligations to their children.
1. Provide food, shelter, water and other necessities to dependent children.
2. Must not deny dependent children any of the above rights.
As always, there are some which I probably have forgotten to list. I'm sure these lists will grow and shrink as discussion continues.
I'm not going to go the, "if you are not a parent, you can't talk" route but I will say this. At one age do you think a child becomes mature enough to be an adult?
Guess what...I decided on my own that those rules weren't really all that bad after all. It was better, and more economical, to let my parents bear the burden of feeding, clothing, and sheltering me. As I got older and got a job and such I was able to relieve some of those burdens and in turn (without realizing it) some of the "rules" they placed on me were relieved.
It's sort of funny as I think about it...my parents were apparently far more awesome than I have until now given them credit for. Pretty much every time I stood my ground I found that I no longer had a task or chore or whatever. For instance I was "forced" to go to church with them until a year or two into college...until one morning when I just refused to get out of bed...I decided that sleep made better sense than going to church and I wasn't going...what're you gonna do? My mom was pissed but she got over it and recognized that it was far better to just let me do my thing than to "force" it on me. Until that time it had never occurred to me that it was even an option...
1. Kids don't currently have the same freedom of speech adults do. Will they get punished at public school for telling a teacher to fuck off? Public school is the government. Kids don't have the same freedom of speech that they should.
2. Many student newspapers in public schools have been censored. That's bullshit.
3. Homeopathy people and culty scientologists also have good intentions in mind. Kids should be allowed to believe whatever they want, and nobody should be able to punish or persecute them for it. If a parent punishes their kid for say, atheism, I consider that a hate crime.
4. Right to assemble period. If kids want to protest, awesome. Right to petition any part of the government.
5. I don't know much about juvenile court, but I do know that a lot of kids never make it to court. They get expelled from school without any sort of fair trial or anything. Kids are punished all the time due to the automatic invocation of policy. That is not cool. If you want to say, expel a kid from school for a crime, you better give them a fair trial first. None of this zero tolerance bs.
6. If a kid wants to go somewhere without trespassing, they can go. If they have their own money to say, buy a plane ticket to visit Disney World, they should not need anyone's permission to go. If your kid wants to walk down the street to the grocery, you can't forcibly prevent them from going.
7. If a 16 year old buys a cellphone with their own money, a teacher can confiscate it and never give it back. If your kid bought a DS with their own money, parents can take it away from them and not give it back. This doesn't sound like right to property to me.
8. State of Connecticut constitution guarantees it, and it seems to work nicely.
9. I don't see how. Every human being should be in control of their own destiny. Period.
10. If you are biologically independent of another human, then you are good to go. As long as you are still in the womb, I consider you to be a part of the mother's body.
11. Emancipation is too difficult, and it can be denied. The idea is good, the system just needs to change.
Something that makes it even more complicated is that it is assumed that when one turns 18 one can take care of themselves. Given the way children are treated these days that is vary rarely the case. I know many adults that should still only have the rights of children, and children that should probably have the rights of adults.