This issue normally arises in relation to abortions. But I’d like to move beyond the abortion issue and pose the question in terms of an infant less than 2 years old. Who has the ultimate authority over that child? The mother, the state, or the child? Consider the following issues:
1.) Nutrition and diet.
2.) Education.
3.) Medical procedures, including vaccinations and major surgery (issues of concent).
More importantly, how many rights does the infant have, as compared to a 21 year old? The mother offers it strained peas for dinner, the child refuses. Can the mother refuse to breast-feed? The vegan mother denies the child basic nutrients and stunts the child’s development (the actually happened I’ll try to find the cite). Consider the right to home, private, public, and religious school. The choice of vaccinations is interesting, ask your child for consent to give them a needle and I’m sure they’ll refuse. Vaccinations have a fatality rate (that is low) so should the government be allowed to override the mother’s choice?
The final part is hard: who has more authority, mother or father?
Most importantly, does the mother have the right to make bad choices for her child, and who decides what’s bad?
The final part is the really easy one: Both parents should have equal authority over their children (except for cases where only one of them has custody, for whatever reason). Oh, and since you mentioned abortion: For the purpose of this discussion, my definition of “child” does not include unborn.
I’d say that all children have certain rights, and that both parents and the state have a duty to ascertain those rights. UN’s convention on the rights of the child probably covers the basics. (I admit I haven’t studied it in detail.) The parents should have the final authority over the child as long as they don’t violate those rights. If they do, it’s the state’s right and duty to step in to protect the child. The child’s authority can’t reach further than its understanding and abilities, which for a two-year-old isn’t very far.
And yes, the parents have the right to make “bad” (whatever that is) choices for their children, as long as they don’t violate their children’s basic rights. I have a right to raise my children in a way which makes it very likely that they’ll join me in Hell if the Christians are right. To me that’s a good choice, to others it may be a bad one. For that matter, I have a right to raise them to be spoiled, bullying brats who are likely to be disliked by most people they meet. I’d guess all of us agree that that would be a bad choice, but it’s not sufficiently bad (IMO) to trigger the state’s right and duty to do something about it.
But I don’t have a right to starve them or keep them away from basic education or necessary health care.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. It is possible to be vegan and feed the child a nutritious diet. Happens all the time. The case of abuse that you are thinking of was the case of two whackos (mother and father) who happened to be vegan, and not very good at it. Omnivores neglect children too.
After the child is born, both parents have equal authority. I don’t know why you are asking about the mother’s right to make bad choices as opposed to the right of both parents to make bad choices.
In most countries, there is a list of choices so bad that the government will step in and take the child. Besides the stuff that we collectively agree is abuse or neglect (and that is a fluid list subject to revisions), who can decide if not breastfeeding or sending the kid to parochial school is a “bad” choice?
I’d say that they don’t necessarily have to have equal authority, rather it just needs to be clear who has ultimate authority over what.
The key for the child is the feeling of safety that comes from knowing that SOMEONE is in charge, and that that person is up to the job.
In fact, the more people that exist in a child’s life that can display themselves to be “in charge” (responsible teachers, coaches, etc.) the better.
ok this is just a stupid question. If a 2 month old could go out and get a job, apartment and a drivers license I could see the correlation but since none of the above can happen then it’s a moot point.
Yes the mother CAN refuse to breastfeet. Thats why bottles were invented
EXCUSE me I’m vegan and MY children are PERFECTLY fine. I feed them a balanced diet just as well as the carnivoirs. If the child isn’t getting the proper nutrition the parent should be arrested for neglect. REGARDLESS of wether or not they eat meat.
If I can find a private school I can afford and that teaches the way I believe I’ll send them there. Till then I’m home schooling
There is no law, that I know of, that says you HAVE to get the child vaccinated. The ONLY reason they insist on it is because it’s a requirement for school. You don’t want to immunize your kids then homeschool them.
The mother and father HAVE to have EQUAL authority or the child will try to pit one against the other. FMOE
Just like any adult the mother has the right to make “bad” choices. Thank goodness too cause that shows their HUMAN and we ALL make mistakes. If it were illegal ALL parents would be in jail at one time or another. Oh and BTW, DADDIES make bad choices too
Can we all agree the nutrition during the first year of life is important? There was a case a few years ago where the parents were crazy health conscious and fed the baby all the health food they ate, which quite litterally meant no fat. The no fat diet prevented the baby’s brain from developing. Which to me is a fate worse than death.
Secondly, breastfeeding is probably the most important thing for an infant, but that’s the biased “pro breastfeeding sites” that I’ve been looking at.
So let’s target nutrition, can the government require breastfeeding? Can the father require breastfeeding? Obviously the baby doesn’t get a say. Its illegal to let your child starve, but those laws are too little too late. Why not something pro-active, a law requiring a balanced diet? A law requiring post-natal nutrition courses?
More importantly, if the infant has the right to life, is that it? Or does it have the right to a GOOD life, which is ultimately has no control over?
[note, I used mother so as not to exclude single family households]
Just to let you know, emacknight, we’ve been down the breastfeeding road before.
Simply put, you can’t force people to “do the right thing”. Different cultures have different standards regarding proper nutrition, for one, and for another, who sets the standards?
Think about this: Would you force a vegetarian family to feed its child meat?
My government already has laws on the books requiring that parents provide adequate food to their children. They are laws against neglecting children, and that’s why you have heard of your (uncited) examples of infants denied nutrition.
Why isn’t it a law that one breastfeeds? Because not breastfeeding!=starvation.
How would an adoptive mother breastfeed? Or a mother who must take medication that could be detrimental to her baby? Or a mother who cannot produce enought milk for her triplets?
Would the law provide exemptions in those cases? If so, it shows that breastfeeding is not a life-or-death (or permenant damage) issue.
Ok lessee here… Breastfeeding VS starvation… Ever heard of FORMULA? No it’s not EXACTLY like breastmilk but it’s sufficient for feeding a baby.:smack: A baby won’t starve to death if the parent gives it enough. Just like breastmilk. :rolleyes:
The government cannot regulate nor require breastfeeding because there are too many reasons NOT to BF. I’d like to see my husband try to MAKE me BF… he’d find a foot up his six faster than lightning. I WISH someone would make it illegal to eat unhealthily. Maybe then my 18 year old would eat something besides McDonalds Big Macs. Post Natal nutrition classes won’t help if the person can’t AFFORD the food to make a balanced diet. Are you saying that all the rich people should be allowed to feed their child properly and the poor should go to jail and lose custody of their children because they cannot afford “proper” food?
OH GOOD GRIEF if it was a godgiven right to have a good life then we would ALL be having one.
[note, that means your biased against single fathers huh?]
If you have sensible laws against mistreatment of children you don’t need separate laws about nourishment. Laws can only help so far. Some suggestions for really proactive ways of fighting malnourishment:[ul][li]Distribute free leaflets about nutrition for infants and children. You don’t need courses - this isn’t rocket science. (And don’t fall for the temptation to let the leaflets be sponsored by manufacturers of formula or baby food - you want the information to focus on good nutrition, not expensive nutrition.) Remember to translate them to all relevant languages - you want to reach recent immigrants too.[/li][li]Offer regular free healthchecks for infants and small children. A nurse measuring weight and height of infants every few weeks and looking at their general condition should be able to catch at least the worst cases of malnourishment, as well as other health problems. Even better: Make the health checks obligatory.[/li][li]…and then there’s the problem of poverty, which need to be adressed (somehow) by the welfare system. Or the Revolution [/ul]These solutions cost money, of course, but you can’t make an omelette without buying eggs. :)[/li]
Requiring breastfeeding is pointless. Sure, breastfeeding is better than formula, but you can raise perfectly healthy children on formula, too.
If you want to tackle a really thorny issue, consider education. The parents should be able to choose between public schools, private schools (some based on minority religions or ideologies), and homeschooling. The state’s job is to ensure that all these provide a certain minimum of education. But how to decide what kind of minimum should be obligatory? Especially when a private school clashes with the values of the majority?
A couple of examples:
There was a case in Norway some years ago when a private school used schoolbooks which said that the man should be the head of the household, and the woman should obey him. Should private schools be allowed to teach this? (I don’t remember the outcome of that case - I can look it up, if anyone’s interested.)
The curriculum of the public schools here include information about birth control and sexual orientations (at the age of 16). Should this be considered obligatory, or should private schools or homeschoolers be free to exclude this information?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by hildea * Some suggestions for really proactive ways of fighting malnourishment:[list][li]Distribute free leaflets about nutrition for infants and children. You don’t need courses - this isn’t rocket science. (And don’t fall for the temptation to let the leaflets be sponsored by manufacturers of formula or baby food - you want the information to focus on good nutrition, not expensive nutrition.) Remember to translate them to all relevant languages - you want to reach recent immigrants too.[/li][li]Offer regular free healthchecks for infants and small children. A nurse measuring weight and height of infants every few weeks and looking at their general condition should be able to catch at least the worst cases of malnourishment, as well as other health problems. Even better: Make the health checks obligatory.[/li][/QUOTE]
Information on development and nutrition- great idea! Available in many languages- great idea! Regular free healthchecks for infants and small children? Eh. If optional, most neglectful or truly clueless parents won’t take advantage of it. And health care for poor children is available; that’s not the issue. If obligatory, it would involve a lot of taxpayer’s money and a lot of bureacratic red tape. In addition, it would be a terrible burden on parents, who would have to pack their child up every few weeks for this, and would still have to find and use a regular pediatrician for illnessses and emergencies.
Plus, if obligatory, every parent would be compelled to participate in this program. Every parent? Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones? If all parents above X level of income were exempted, it would be condescending and insulting to poorer parents. After all, a well-off Manhatten lawyer, for example, is capable of neglect or some bizarre food psychosis just as is a minimum-wage worker.
Education is a thorny issue. I would be interested to see how the Norwegian courts handled that case, hildea, if you don’t mind. Here in America, that would be perfectly legal for a private school to teach. As for sex ed, no, there are no requirements for it to be taught in private schools or by homeschooling parents. Even in the public schools, parents have the right to request that their child be exempted from sex ed.
That last paragraph is all IIRC. I’m sure someone will be along to correct me if I have made any factual errors.
In the United States, there already exists a program to teach lower-income parents about nutrition. It’s called Women, Infants and Children (WIC). The program also gives vouchers for food during the pregnancy, formula or breastfeeding advice after delivery (and in Texas, anyway, WIC is incredibly pro-breastfeeding and will lend hospital-grade pumps and give sessions with a certified lactation consultant), and food once the baby is weaned.
Also, many hospitals offer parenting and baby-skills classes for expectant parents, and the one I delivered at, University Hospital in San Antonio, offered a free car seat if I attended five of six or seven classes.
The problem I see is not so much access, because the information is out there. It’s that either parents don’t know where to go for this help, or that they don’t know that they need it.
As a soon to be mother, the answer to all of the original questions is easy. The answer is this- good parents do the best they can, sometimes more which would make them great parents. Until my child is old enough to understand the consequences of his or her actions, I have control over what s/he eats, drinks, and does. (Myself and my husband, that is.) Neither parent should have more control over a child then the other. The way that kids BOND with their parents is different though. For example, I was closer emotionally to my father until I was about 10. My mother was the one who bandaged my cuts and scrapes, but my dad was the one who convinced me that they wouldn’t leave scars. After 10, I was closer to my mom, emotionally, because she was a “girl” and so was I. But I am lucky enough to have had both of my parents, my whole life, together.
I think we can all agree that the most important thing is for new parents to be informed about the choices they’ll be making. BEFORE the baby is born. Which is why hospitals have classes and why the program WIC exsists. Maybe we should stop worrying about the breastfeeding/not breastfeeding debate (because kids can be healthy w/o being breastfed) and start worrying MORE about educating people.
The schools decided not to appeal the decision, so it didn’t end up in court.
About health checks: Sure, health checks for all children are expensive - that’s the big drawback. OTOH, the government can (and does) spend my tax money on far worse things than making sure all children are healthy. (Bombing Afghanistan springs to mind, but that’s another debate.) AFAIK, the health checks aren’t obligatory here, but they are really, really usual. Parents to all infants get invitations in the post, and it’s not “drop by if you feel like it” but “we’ve reserved time for your child next Tuesday at 10.00”.
They are definitively not aimed at poor families only. I found them great myself, especially for our first child, for someone to ask about small insecurities (does he grow as he should? what should I do about that rash?), as well as a place to meet other parents (mostly mothers) in the neighbourhood. This article hints that Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones needn’t regard health checks as beneath them :
**
It is only humans who talk about rights and duties over offspring. But since humans are also animals, it is useful for us to recall how animals take care of their offspring.
For animals which are hatched from eggs laid by the mother but left outside the body of the mother, they either take care of themselves or the mother or the father or both take care of them. (Correct me if I am wrong here.)
For animals which are born from the womb of their mother as fully formed members of their species, the mother or the father or both take care of them.
Human offspring are of the latter kind. So we can do no less than animals: we have to take care of our offspring, specifically the mother or the father or both. That is a duty of nature.
Upon whom is the child immediately dependent for survival on exiting from the maternal womb? Before the rise of organized society, both the mother and the father: the mother to provide its first nourishment, the father to protect both mother and child from danger.
In organized but pre-technological society, the father might be dispensable, but the mother still had a very crucial role, that of nursing the baby.
With the arrival of formula milk constituted from the females of other species, we might say that the role of nursing by the mother had been diminished, and could be optional.
Whatever the nutritional role played by the mother over her child, the baby is very much more a part of the mother than of the father; for after impregnation, the father could leave but the mother is absolutely necessary for the baby to come to term, and to make its appearance in the world as a distinct human entity.
So, naturally the mother is much more attached to her baby than the father. The history of human society bears out this verity. It would be a very unnatural mother to not care for her offspring, and to not devote her time and labor and sacrifices to see to the upbringing of her offspring, so that one day it will be on its own as a completely self-autonomous member of society.
Our discussion starts from nature and veers toward organized society and into the technological civilization that is our society in the Western world at present.
Who have rights over the child in our present organized technological society? Four entities: mother, father, child himself, and society itself.
The mother because she gave birth to the child; the father because he impregnated the mother; society because it is concerned with the continuation of society itself or the group making up the society; and the child himself because he has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, just like any other human being.
The rights of the child owing to his lack of knowledge and his physical and psychological immaturity are reserved to the mother and father to exercise for the benefit of the child, toward only one sole most essential purpose: that the child will grow up to be an independent individual person to live by himself on his own moral and physical resources.
What about society? It has the right to supervise how parents are exercising the rights of the child for the sake of the child. If society should conclude that one or both parents are doing a very poor job at bringing up the child, it will take the appropriate action.
If one parent is not qualified but the other is qualified, then the child is awarded to the qualified parent. If both are not qualified, then society will take the child away from them and consign it to an institution that is tasked to bring up such children from unpropitious home into autonomous useful members of society.
The principle therefore that is foremost and absolutely decisive in determining how rights over the child are to be exercised is the following:
The child should be preserved in life and be brought up so that one day it can take its place as a self-autonomous useful member of society, being of course useful to himself at the same time.
Emacknight asks who is in charge of the following items in regard to the child: food, home, health and medicine, and education.
Before anything else, all parties involved with the child should equip themselves to be able to provide the child with food, home, health and medicine, and education that will surely bring up the child to become a self-resourceful member of society, and to himself enjoy a good life.
That premised, as far as I know, law in our Western technological society has a bias in favor of the mother; so that routinely a child under a certain age cannot be separated from its mother; unless the mother is conspicuously inhospitious to the essential role of properly bringing up her child.
Otherwise, the parent who can do better in providing food, home, health and medicine, and education, and very importantly, his personal presence and attention, I am certain is the one preferred by society in its laws. To know the particulars of those provisions one has to consult texts on marriage, family, and domestic relations.
Some specific questions of Emacknight:
Q. How many rights does an infant have (below 2 years old) compared to a 21 years old?
A. I think all the rights potentially of the 21 years old person; but he cannot use them for lacking the required discretion prescribed in law, until he reaches civil and political majority, which is customarily at the age of 21.
Q. Does the mother have the right to make bad choices for the child? Who decides what’s bad?
Q. No, not the mother and not anyone; because it is an injustice to make bad choices for other people. Society makes the decision what’s a bad choice for your child, in the concrete the government by its law.
I hope that my answers will be of help to you, dear Emacknight. I used to do a good stint in marriage and family counseling. However, as regards the specifics of your questions and my answers, you have to consult a very good marriage and family lawyer in your vicinity.
As far as health checks go, I note that they are optional, not mandatory. So both abusive and delusional, mentally ill parents can opt out if they wish. As for the princess and her husband, they are not exactly your run-of-the-mill well-off private citizens. They darn well should be taking their child to an official health check station in their capacity as a role models. No doubt there will be a photographer or camera crew along, to better promote the program?
It just seems that there is no question that a health check can answer that our pediatrician cannot.
If the child isn’t getting the proper nutrition the parent should be arrested for neglect. REGARDLESS of wether or not they eat meat.
[/ul]These solutions cost money, of course, but you can’t make an omelette without buying eggs. :)[/li]