One Utah

A while back, I saw this post at Feministe about children - the author started by pointing out how frequently one hears the phrase “I hate children” and went on to point out that children are the most radically disempowered group in our society:

 Calling children “radically disempowered” is almost an understatement. Pretty much from the moment they’re born, children are subject to a world that treats them as much like property as like people. Children grow up in a world with no voice. There are countless rules and regulations controlling their daily lives, and they have absolutely no say in any of those rules. They are subject to the whims of the people around them- people who may or may not have their best interests in mind. Children have no privacy and no right to a fair trial when an adult (parent) accuses the child of wrong doing. Their entire lives are at the whims of people who control what clothes they wear, whether they have a roof over their heads, whether they even eat.

. . .  Children are one of the most easily victimized groups on the planet. They’re targeted for rape/sexual abuse, kidnapping, forced prostitution, slave labor… and they have little to no means of fighting back or escaping from these situations. Millions upon millions of children go without any health insurance in the United States, through circumstances completely beyond their control.

Ever since I read this, I’ve been thinking thinking about the rights of the child - each individual child, as a whole and distinct human being.  Attitudes toward children seem to emphasize obedience over independence, over exploration; children are expected to conform to the adults around them, even when those adults are manifestly and painfully wrong.

Societally, children are often punished for their parents’ shortcomings - parents who have done a piss poor of socializing their children almost never come in for blame when the child is acting like a wild beast in a public space.  We blame the child we say, “We hate children.”  However, the parents should have taught their child appropriate behavior in public.  Parents are often granted almost free rein where their children are concerned - it’s not uncommon for parents to assert absolute rights over their children’s lives.  James Dobson recommends parents use corporal punishment on their offspring through adolescence (in one book he suggested that older adolescents should be made to cut the switch from tree with which their parent will beat them).

We try adolescents as adults in our courts, but outside the court room, we deny the same adolescent adult rights.  The contradiction - institutionalized in our system - should disturb more people than it does.  Either an adolescent does not possess the development ability to act like an adult and be treated like an adult or an adolescent does not.  The idea that we’ll treat you like an adult to send you to prison but not to make a decision about your own life is patently wrong.

Childhood and adolescence are development stages, as you grow through them, you should, ideally, experience a set of emotional, intellectual, and physical changes leading you to the next development stage.  The average five year old does not possess the intellectual or emotional ability to care for him/herself.  Physically, most five year olds are capable of bathing and dresing themselves (though the outfits that result may not strictly fit the definition of fashion) but probably shouldn’t be cooking.  A ten year, by contrast, is probably more than capable of managing to prepare some basic food, but again, probably does not possess the development skills to fully care for his/her emotional and intellectual needs.  In that sense, the child is not capable of making the kinds of adult choices our society requires.

That lack of some level of ability does not mean a child is absolutely incapable of recognizing his/her needs and the ways in which they are not being met.  A five year is old enough to know it’s wrong for their parent to abuse them and that five year old should be trusted to tell the truth.  In healthy families, children are granted many rights according to their development level.  Healthy families prepare their children for adulthood by granting that child increasing autonomy.  Unhealthy families tend toward the extremes - either refusing to grant child increasing autonomy (George Lakoff points out that this mode of child-rearing creates adults who are crippled when it comes to making decisions - waiting for outside authority to tell them what to do, they are at a loss when it’s time to evaluate information and make choices) or forcing them to take on too adult roles (the children of alcoholics often take on caretaker roles in the family).

The more I ponder, the more it occurs to me that as a matter of social justice, we should begin defining the rights of the child - as a society we have an obvious need for children to grow into healthy, functional adults. 

Which brings me at long last to my central question - What rights should be accorded to children?

Here’s my stab at a list of the rights of the child.

1. Children have rights as independent beings; the rights of each child are are not dependent upon the whims of their parents, caregivers, or caretakers; children have the right to be treated with basic human dignity by all persons.
2. Children have the right to pass through and experience physical, emotional, sexual, intellectual and spiritual developmental stages as they naturally occur and the right to receive appropriate care and information to help them through their personal growth and development.
3. Children have the right to expect that the needs they are not able to meet for themselves will be met for them by their caregivers, parents, or society - needs which include food, clothing, mental and physical health care, shelter.
4. Children have the right to be free of sexual, emotional, and physical violence, exploitation, abuse, and mistreatment.
5. Children have the right to their own faith, values, beliefs and opinions which may or may not be the same as their parents.
6. Children have the right to an education which is age appropriate, complete, accurate and comprehensive.
7. Children have the right to be trusted to judge for themselves if they are being abused or mistreated.
8. Children are persons, not property, and have the right to be treated as persons.

This entry was posted Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Society, This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.