Parents have a fundamental right to raise and educate their children as they see fit. Their authority precedes that of the state.
Whatever view might be taken philosophically or psychologically of the issue, what is clear is that the very notion of ‘Gender fluidity’ and of kindred notions is theoretically hig
A new book defends the view that parents have primary authority over their children. The role of the state is to help parents, not to take over tasks that are properly parental.
Children are young human beings. Some children are very young human beings. As human beings children evidently have a certain moral status. There are things that should not be done
As early theories of rights developed in the seventeenth century, the idea that parents had extensive and strongly protected rights over their children was largely unquestioned. In
To be a parent comprises two different functions, procreating and childrearing. In practice, they are usually bundled: most procreators also rear their offspring, and hence are the
The family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture
Since they have conferred life on their children, parents have the original, primary and inalienable right to educate them; hence they must be acknowledged as the first and foremos
To understand the ethical dimensions of parenthood it is important first to draw a distinction between biological and other relations. In the case of human beings a parent is an individual that contributed a gamete (male = sperm, female = ovum) that fused to form the zygote from which offspring developed. Until recently this was the result of sexual intercourse, but with the development of IVF and egg donation the issue has become more complex and contributed to the separation of sex and reproduction, i.e. you can, and increasingly people do, have one without the other. Beyond the merely biological relationship the notion of a human parent carries with it certain cultural and ethical aspects. Parenting is socially and ethically defined in terms of the responsibilities of care and rearing, hence the idea that the abandonment or neglect of a child (where it is not coerced) is a serious fault. In this sense, however, a parent need not be a biological father or mother. The most common and important forms of non-biological parenting are adoption and fostering, with the first being the most significant since it amounts to regarding and treating a child as one’s own. The idea of parental right follows the lines of these previous distinctions. Biological parents are in general holders of parental rights in virtue of the role they discharge in parenting, and on this basis adoptive parents also tend to be viewed as having the same rights. Arguably, then, what ground parental rights are the fact of those duties. From this two questions arise: what is the extent of those rights? And when, if ever, is it permissible for the state or some other authority to override parental rights. In recent times both issues have become subjects of dispute.