That’s pretty much the nub of the debate right there. Obviously, there are many parents who feel as you do, Eilsel. I can understand and sympathize with where you and ivylass – and many, many others – are coming from. But, as it happens, I agree with those who believe that parental notification and, even more so, parental consent laws are undesirable and dangerous.
(NOTE: the 2nd person singular is used in the following paragraphs not to refer to anyone in particular, but to a hypothetical concerned, loving, supportive parent).
I can understand your heartfelt desire to be given the opportunity to be there for your child, to guide, counsel and support her through whatever troubles and crises she may face. It’s laudable, and I commend you for it. But it is not properly up to the state to give you that opportunity. It is up to the individual in crisis, and properly so.
I volunteer for a rape crisis hotline. Say I get a call from a teenager (under 18), who has been date-raped. I have to tell you that, even if she were to give me identifying information, I am under no legal or ethical obligation to report the rape to the police or to her parents. Say she asks me, “Should I tell my parents that I was raped?” I am under a positive ethical obligation as a crisis counselor to refrain from either encouraging her to or discouraging her from telling her parents or anyone else. The matter at hand for me as a crisis counselor is to try to help her come to her own decision about what is best for her. I could ask her about what she thinks would be positive about telling them, what might be negative. Help her explore the issue. But ultimately it is her decision to tell or not to tell. And I’m very committed to the proposition that this is right and proper, even in those cases where I believe in my heart that she is making the wrong decision. Still, it is her decision and nobody else’s.
I know that if you were her mother, you’d want to know what happened to her, so you could help her. But if she knows that the state will force her to tell you or will force me to tell you, then she may well decide not to call and thus will be cut off not only from your help and support but from mine as well. I certainly concede that the help you can provide, as her mother, is likely to be far superior to mine, but even mine is better than nothing. If the state decides that minors have no right to confidentiality then many, many teens will choose to seek no help at all rather than turning to their parents, even when they have caring, helpful and supportive parents.
This is not about getting a piercing or not. That analogy just doesn’t cut it. Sexuality, reproductive decisions, mental health, substance abuse – these matters are so intensely personal that no one but the individual concerned has the right to dictate decision-making on them. (And decision-making includes who to tell and who not to tell.)
On a slightly different note . . .
The notion of parental rights that some people are advancing here does make me uncomfortable insofar as it seems almost to border on considering minor offspring as chattel. An emphasis on the parent’s right to decide what her child will eat, what she will wear, what she will do with her body, seems to me rather naive. The maturing process demands that children separate from their parents and establish control over and responsibility for the decisions that intimately affect themselves and their own bodies. That control and responsibility does not, should not, and cannot belong irrevocably and absolutely to the parents up until the child turns 18, at which point control and responsibility passes utterly to the (now adult) child.
The mother of a 10-year-old boy may well wish that, if her son is being tormented by a bully at school he will come to her with the problem and receive her help and guidance. Her help and guidance may well be exactly what he needs in this situation. But the fact is, he may decide to try and handle things on his own, because he’s a growing-up person and he’s trying to figure out how to be independent. Or maybe he’ll ask an older brother for help or talk to the parent of his best friend, and ask them to keep the conversation confidential. If he asks for confidentiality, do you feel the state should make it a crime for the non-parent to honor that request and not notify the boy’s parent?
I’m not saying that the situations are identical. I’m saying that children grow up gradually, not miraculously and all at once when they hit 18. Sometimes in the process of growing up they find themselves in over their heads. I’m sure as parents we all wish that they would turn to us when that happens, but we have to acknowledge that just by virtue of our being their parents we may be the last people they want to inform of the details of their troubles. Wouldn’t we rather they found help and support from someone ethical and professional rather than that they felt forced, in order to preserve their privacy, to turn in another, more dangerous, direction?
