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Essay on Moral Life of Children
Parental rights are best understood as stewardship rights that are limited by a duty to respect the child's rights. This approach toward children's moral status is best able to reconcile the commonsense claims that children deserve moral consideration equal to that of adults, that unequal treatment of children is sometimes justified, and that parents have limited discretion over how their children are brought up.
The proposed rights-based approach also offers a better guide to public policy than the best interest test or the clear and present danger standard. (Owen Flanagan)We think that any acceptable theory of the moral status of children must be compatible with three claims: that children deserve the same moral consideration as adults, that they can nevertheless be treated differently from adults, and that parents have limited authority to direct their upbringing. These claims embody a position that we think is quite plausible and attractive. In fact, they define a position that seems to be the subject of a large and growing consensus about the moral status of children in contemporary liberal democracies. Though this consensus is of some evidential value in itself, there are independent considerations to support the three claims. While they do not conclusively prove that the claims are true, they do show that the claims are very plausible. Indeed, the considerations we will discuss seem sufficient to shift the burden of proof onto those who would reject the three claims.
But while each claim seems independently plausible, the set seems prima facie inconsistent. This apparent inconsistency is evidence of certain tensions in our commonsense thinking about children. The philosophical challenge here is to develop a theory that embodies and makes sense of all three claims in a way that resolves the tensions between them. Improper child raising in the 1990s is rapidly becoming a serious concern among parents, schools, and politicians......
