It seems pretty clear that neglecting a child’s nutritional needs can rise to the level of abuse or neglect, in extreme cases justifying government intervention to protect the rights of the child.
What about the child’s educational needs? Are we obligated to see that the child learns the three R’s? Are we obligated to see that the child learns anything else?
By “obligation”, I presume you are referring to a moral obligation, one that rationally follows from your choice to create a human being. Some people end up creating a child by accident, or are tricked into it, and I’m not talking about those cases – I mean a conscious deliberate choice. Just to be explicit, I also assume when you say “our” children, I assume you mean your own children, not “society’s children”. What do I owe my child, what do you owe your child, what does he owe his child.
Creating a person should not be done on a whim, one should have a clear understanding of why you are doing so, and not just buying a puppy. A puppy will never become a rational being, a child might. An infant will not actually develop into a rational being without some kind of guidance. It’s irrational to think that children are born with Galt’s Speech planted in their brains whereby they can magically discover how to become fully rational. This is what a parent has an obligation to do: to provide such guidance. It is probably a joint effort between the parents and the parent’s agents, so that mom and dad don’t have to actually devise lessons in reading and writing.
Your question seems to be focused on specific technical content. The list of specific technical things that a child should learn is huge: reading, writing, rhetoric, literature, history, philosophy, physics, biology, economics, fishing, hunting, home economics (i.e. “how to wash your clothes; how to cook a meal”). Personally, I think one should try to explain the basic logic of numeric exponentiation, if you can. You don’t teach long lists of facts, you teach very small sets of facts in the course of teaching methods of reasoning. In other words, all you have to teach is the tools of reason, but you do have to go beyond just saying “A is A”.
DavidOdden, you have given a good answer to one question.
Another question is, can failure to educate a child rise to a level that justifies government intervention to protect the child’s rights?
That’s a tough question. The government should only use force to protect an individual from violation of rights, i.e. the initiation of force. Failure to provide a decent upbringing is not the initiation of force, so there is no moral basis for government intervention under the pretext that the child’s rights are being violated.
Children are also not the property of their parents, to be disposed of as the parent sees fit, so we can dispose of the pretext of “parental education rights”. As an outsider, I should not be forcefully prevented from giving an education to the child, as long as I do not physically force the child to endure that education. That solves the problem in case the parents can’t be bothered to educate their child, and don’t actively block my efforts. What if the parent refuses to allow the child to receive an education, would it be proper for the government to enforce the parent’s wishes? Example 1: the parents want to teach that there is no God but Allah (etc), and I want to teach that there is no God, period. The parents want to give the child a misintegrated education on this point, I want to give the child an integrated education. Example 2: the parents say nothing one way or the other about religion, I want to teach that there is no God – the parents want the child to remain ignorant of the issue. Example 3: the parents want to teach that there is no God, some third party (not me!) wants to teach that that there is no God but Allah. Can the parents then use government force to prevent that person from promulgating a religion at the child? Can I use government force to prevent a parent from promulgating a religion at a child?
Were we dealing with an adult, the solution would be simple: the individual in question must decide how to survive as a rational being, he has to make his own choices. We cannot assume that a 6 year old child has adult rationality.
The current governmental regime (not just the Biden administration, the whole western legal system over the past century) mostly presumes that the parents best know what is in the interest of the child, though that is a defeasible presumption. One way in which that presumption is overridden is when the government declares that parents cannot leave a child completely uneducated. But the actual implementation of the mandate to educate is about 150º off-course. If the government has the power to require parents to provide a proper education, then the government has the power to dictate what constitutes a proper education, and what thoughts / viewpoints / facts are acceptable. Since a government censor is the greatest threat to human existence, I have to conclude that government mandated education does not actually protect the rights of a child. A proper government also cannot enforce ignorance by preventing non-parental education of a child.
16 hours ago, Doug Morris said:
DavidOdden, you have given a good answer to one question.
Another question is, can failure to educate a child rise to a level that justifies government intervention to protect the child’s rights?
Doug, perhaps a little thought experiment could lead you in the right direction.
Imagine in a proper (Objectivist) society, there were recognized private causes of action for abuse or negligent behavior or neglect that dependent people could raise against their caretakers. The relationship of dependency gives rise to duties and responsibilities which are voluntarily taken on by virtue of the person’s holding themselves out to be and continuing to be in that position of caretaking. Now, children cannot bring suit on behalf of themselves, but when they become an adult they are able (in this society) to bring claims against their parents for wrongs which they could not have brought forward and/or could not have been held responsible for bringing forward as a child.
What sorts of things would a judge decide are wrongs for which justice would require restitution? Which sorts of things would perhaps not be considered wrong at all?
It stands to reason then that for those facts patterns and cases where some recompense would be required if discovered afterward (brought forth by person upon reaching adulthood - age of majority), some sort of intervention, persuasion, information, … and in extreme cases (irreparable harm) force… would be in order if discovered while the person is still a child.
An adult who thinks the outdoors and any social contact is “bad” and keeps their child indoors and away from all people, is likely causing irreparable psychological harm (or effectively irreparable), and intervention would likely be necessary. All extreme cases of physical, emotional, and intellectual neglect will likely fall into the same category.
An adult who otherwise educates their child enough about “this” world, so as to enable them to function as a self-responsible independent adult when the time comes, should be adjudged as not being negligent, no matter what political, religious, or philosophical views they teach.
There of course would be difficult cases in the areas in between… is there “enough” care being given… and perhaps in those instances, being able to sue for an amount required to pay for further education, extra health or medical attention, or therapy would be a good way to see how much the neglect really has kept the person back. Developments in the law and the legal theories surrounding this as well as scientific psychological advances would be useful in navigating this difficult area.
One thing for sure the standards would have to be realistic… with a clear and sober effort to avoid perfectionism… no person is perfect, no parent is perfect, and no one comes out of childhood perfect either.
On 5/18/2023 at 6:50 AM, StrictlyLogical said:
The relationship of dependency gives rise to duties and responsibilities which are voluntarily taken on by virtue of the person’s holding themselves out to be and continuing to be in that position of caretaking.
I can see the logic if I hear this as another way of saying “Love creates obligations/required actions”.
But I still don’t understand “what is the right of the child”. And why?
The child (descriptively) won’t protect itself enough to survive. It is dependent on another. This obligation becomes voluntary when there is love. It becomes involuntary when there is NO love or compassion. Is the implication that you must love all children?
My quandary centers around the issue of “why should a child … inherently have rights”? Other than our emotional reaction to the fact that they are cute or our empathetic response to them getting hurt. Meaning it is emotional. Why not just say, they should have rights because it disgusts me if they don’t?
3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
I can see the logic if I hear this as another way of saying “Love creates obligations/required actions”.
But I still don’t understand “what is the right of the child”. And why?
The child (descriptively) won’t protect itself enough to survive. It is dependent on another. This obligation becomes voluntary when there is love. It becomes involuntary when there is NO love or compassion. Is the implication that you must love all children?
My quandary centers around the issue of “why should a child … inherently have rights”? Other than our emotional reaction to the fact that they are cute or our empathetic response to them getting hurt. Meaning it is emotional. Why not just say, they should have rights because it disgusts me if they don’t?
Love has nothing to do with it. The voluntary action of putting oneself in the role of protector and provider (rather than letting that fall to someone else) does give rise to expectations, both from the child and from other people who otherwise would take care of the child. It is a positive act which is traded in essence with everyone else’s compliance… “Let me take care of this child, and do not interfere with me doing so, I will ensure the child is raised into a healthy independent adult.”
The rights of a child are different from an adult, a right to life yes, but not the right to act free from any intervention if the action is potentially harmful to the child. The rights of children and other dependents then ARE different from the rights of independent adults.
Note also, a child can be in someone’s possession, and taken care of but cannot be “owned” they are not property, and as animated creatures they have agency… if a child runs away, why should someone else “give” her back to you? You cannot go to court to claim her on the basis that you own her, you have no right to her as property. When you force a child to do something against their wishes what gives you the right (as a non-owner) to do so, i.e. on what grounds could you argue others should not/cannot prevent you from doing so? Clearly, your argument would be “This thing (which I do not own as chattel), I am forcing to do something which makes it temporarily suffer by crying etc. BECAUSE it is in its own long term interest, please do not intervene”
Summary: A child is. You have not the right to kill it (it has a right to life) or to irreparably harm it. You also have no right to keep it against all others (it is not your property) except by their agreement… and in the right kind of society that agreement is in place when you are the voluntarily proclaimed caregiver of that child and are doing that which you have promised to do.
On 5/18/2023 at 9:50 AM, StrictlyLogical said:
There of course would be difficult cases in the areas in between… is there “enough” care being given… and perhaps in those instances, being able to sue for an amount required to pay for further education, extra health or medical attention, or therapy would be a good way to see how much the neglect really has kept the person back. Developments in the law and the legal theories surrounding this as well as scientific psychological advances would be useful in navigating this difficult area.
This is all premised on the idea that there are others who would and could have taken care of the child to a sort of minimal “healthy childhood” standard.
If the caregiver maintained that he/she was capable of and was providing that minimum, while preventing others from providing that minimum, to the child… that caregiver better have actually provided that minimum, or should have given the child up to someone else who would have done so.
4 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
I can see the logic if I hear this as another way of saying “Love creates obligations/required actions”.
But I still don’t understand “what is the right of the child”. And why?
The child (descriptively) won’t protect itself enough to survive. It is dependent on another. This obligation becomes voluntary when there is love. It becomes involuntary when there is NO love or compassion. Is the implication that you must love all children?
My quandary centers around the issue of “why should a child … inherently have rights”? Other than our emotional reaction to the fact that they are cute or our empathetic response to them getting hurt. Meaning it is emotional. Why not just say, they should have rights because it disgusts me if they don’t?
What about the argument that those responsible for bringing a child into existence thereby acquire a responsibility to take care of its needs?
1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:
What about the argument that those responsible for bringing a child into existence thereby acquire a responsibility to take care of its needs?
Yes but why? Based on what principle? Is there some contract here? Between who?
2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:
The rights of a child are different from an adult, a right to life yes, but not the right to act free from any intervention if the action is potentially harmful to the child. The rights of children and other dependents then ARE different from the rights of independent adults.
But what is a right to life in this context? A right implies, no opposition to your living. But a child can’t live?
2 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
But what is a right to life in this context? A right implies, no opposition to your living. But a child can’t live?
It means you cant kill the child, nor can you own it like property. The child is an end in himself or herself.
Contracts are only relevant to business arrangements that are to be enforced by the government. I conclude that there is a legally-enforceable responsibility that isn’t contractual (a tort). Adding government enforcement complicates the question, and resolving the question of responsibility has to come first.
The key idea is that when living in a social context, others are not sacrificial objects to be used and discarded on a whim. All men are of potentially enduring value to you, and your actions should be consistent with that fact. Therefore, when walking your dog, you should take responsibility for your dog’s excretions and for it’s random lungings at other animate beings like cats and other dogs. Short-term thinking might lead you to think that leaving a steaming heap on someone’s lawn or next to their car is optimal from the personal self-interest perspective (saves a microscopic amount of time that could otherwise be used for something of higher value to you), but this ignores the fundamental fact that dog feces are objectively a disvalue, and your action (or having and walking a dog) brought this disvalue into existence. “Responsibility” is about cause and effect. “Moral obligation” is a recognition of that causal relationship, that is, it is the code that relates what is (I caused that turd, or that child) to what ought (I should pick up the turd, I should feed and educate the child).
Objectivists are particularly centered on the question of the proper role of government, and in this discussion, there is mostly an interest in the question of rights and government intervention. I am going to assume, at my peril, that everybody agrees that a person has a certain moral obligation when they chose to create another human. With that clearly established (right??), then we can turn to the question of proper government action. The first thing, which should be obvious, is that proper government action must be constrained by the rule of law – there has to be an objectively-stated principle saying when and how the government will intervene.
The problem of children and the law is that the government should equally, non-contradictorily protect the interests of each individual, but one of the central parties (the child) is to some extent incapable of using their faculty of reason to make a rational choice. The role of the government is therefore to adjudicate the question, to compare competing claims as to the child’s interest (this includes post-hoc “would have decided” cases for restitution given that a third party did not necessarily advance an alternative to a parent’s notion of the child’s interest). The government should enforce the virtue of honesty to a certain extent: if you intend to renounce your interests in a child, you must do so openly, so that others can know that the child is now a disvalue to you, that you intend to abandonment it, and others can act according to their own values. Child neglect is not the result of a parent renouncing interest in a child, it comes from falsely claiming an interest while actually having renounced that interest. Questions of child rights and legally-enforceable obligations flow from honest versus dishonest dealings with the interests of the child.
The law does already state the procedure for renouncing an interest in the child, though because of the disease of social safety net, it does so at taxpayer’s expense (governmental orphanages). A perfectly reasonable replacement for this instant-gratification method of child abandonment is to require the custodian to secure a replacement custodian, following some objectively-stated standard. In other words, this is an aspect of tort law. You have a limited duty of care to a child, whereby your abandonment of interest in the child is not instantaneous and whimsical, it is orderly.
3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:
I conclude that there is a legally-enforceable responsibility that isn’t contractual (a tort).
In this case, I would say that one has to make a “human species” argument. As in, if we did not enforce these responsibilities, the species would perish. Otherwise, one has a responsibility to nurture their child because they want to, they would love it, that it has meaning and fulfillment to them.
Otherwise, I would love to know what the “complete” argument is. I think the only argument I can understand is the “caretaker’s rights”. Once a parent gives away a powerless child that is incapable of survival, it is unowned property. The moment someone claims the child, that person’s rights ought to be respected.
Now, SL would disagree that they can be property.
Also in the case of a child of perhaps 6 or 7 that survives like in Brazil’s inner city gangs or North Korea where they huddle with other children and somehow survive, other children, take them under their wings. They ultimately belong to someone until they CAN belong to themself. All the protections of a child are the caretaker’s right’s. A potential rational being is not a rational being.
I suspect that SL is not being strictly logical in this case, he has children and it is an emotional reaction on his part. I don’t necessarily disagree with him or you, but I posit that to some extent your positions are emotional. If so and if I were you, I would push the idea that emotions in some cases are in fact a valid cognitive tool.
Also, we have to be clear about a non-rational child vs a rational child. A non-rational one would be a weak, incapable child. This area also relates to people incapable of surviving, the old, the feeble, etc. If dependency somehow creates a legally enforceable responsibility, then altruism has some legs.
David, you are well versed in the legal aspects, but I speak as someone who does not know the law, I only work with the moral aspects. More in terms of “what should the law be?”
There are some bits and pieces missing in your position statement. So, “one has a responsibility to nurture their child because they want to, they would love it, that it has meaning and fulfillment to them”. No, you have this responsibility because you acted in that fashion in the past. You willingly took on that responsibility. But, as I say, you can repudiate that responsibility in an orderly fashion.
I think the position that a child is property is untenable from the Objectivist POV. A child is a person (it seems that’s where we disagree), and people cannot be property (man has rights, rights do not conflict). However, it is useful to explicitly lay out these positions. We need to identify a moral proposition regarding rights. We generally hold that it is man that has rights: then what constitutes “being man”? Are you proposing that it is an instance of homo sapiens who has convincingly demonstrated the present ability to survive by reason? Or are you disagreeing with the statement that it is man that has rights?
1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:
If dependency somehow creates a legally enforceable responsibility, then altruism has some legs.
That’s not the point. The point is that someone who creates dependency thereby acquires responsibility. If you create a dependent child, you are responsible for that child. If you initiate force against someone in a manner that renders them dependent, you are responsible for paying for their care.
On 5/21/2023 at 1:29 PM, DavidOdden said:
We generally hold that it is man that has rights: then what constitutes “being man”? Are you proposing that it is an instance of homo sapiens who has convincingly demonstrated the present ability to survive by reason? Or are you disagreeing with the statement that it is man that has rights?
Ultimately “man has rights” implies that every “man (however defined)” should be unopposed in certain actions i.e. free to do certain things.
The need to survive in society (two or more people) gives rise to the rights requirement. That which cannot survive on its own is dependent on the caretaker. So the argument seems to be that if you have created a dependent entity with a need to survive, then you are responsible for it. And I would ask why?
You remove a piece of cancer out of your body, it is dependent on you to survive. You plant a tree, it is dependent on you to survive. You bring home a stray kitten, separating it from its mother, etc. My fundamental point is that we can’t say that dependency alone creates an obligation.
I have heard arguments like “You create a burden on others by bringing in a child that you can’t take care of”. That can be considered a form of aggression.
From a consequentialist point of view, you are responsible if you love that entity. Why are you responsible? Because if you don’t take care of it and it is harmed or dies, YOU HURT. It ties into your rational self-interest to take care of this dependent entity, being a child, your elderly parent, your friend who is unconscious, etc. It is your emotional response: “love” that causes that obligation.
As far as a child being property, descriptively speaking, you are pregnant on an island all alone. The child is born. You can do whatever with it. But prescriptively speaking, what should you be doing if you don’t love the child at all? Without any empathetic feelings of pity or compassion, it’s just a rock to be left there. I would cringe at the idea of leaving a child behind but I admit that it is emotional on my part. I can’t successfully argue for it.
1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:
if you have created a dependent entity with a need to survive, then you are responsible for it. And I would ask why?
The argument is primarily that your actions have predictable consequences, and that “responsibility” is a recognition of that cause-effect relationship. If I’m responsible for the success of an enterprise I get credit, and if I’m responsible for the demise of an enterprise I get the blame, but either way my actions create a responsibility. Accepting the consequences of your actions is simple honesty. Responsibility is a broad concept not limited to “creating a dependent being”: it is nothing more than respecting causality. If you cause an effect, you are responsible for the effect. “Responsible” simply paraphrases the word “causes”.
Before we try to move into the question of legal enforcement of rights, I think it’s necessary to focus on a much simpler question, about the nature of responsibility. This is a simple binary question: do you accept that a responsibility derives from the choice to create a child?
22 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
You remove a piece of cancer out of your body, it is dependent on you to survive. You plant a tree, it is dependent on you to survive. You bring home a stray kitten, separating it from its mother, etc. My fundamental point is that we can’t say that dependency alone creates an obligation.
A piece of cancer does not have a life, neither actual nor potential, and definitely does not have rights. Also, it does not make sense to talk about taking care of the piece of cancer unless there is a need to study it. Trees and kittens do not have rights the way humans do. A person who brings home a stray kitten, separating it from its mother, and does not intend to provide for it in any way, is within their political rights, but such action does not make sense.
In the present era, do parents have a moral responsibility to finance a child’s college education? How much college?
Is it morally irresponsible to have children if one is not assuming responsibility for financing the child’s future college education, in the event that the child turns out to be college material?