The conflict between parental authority and the public trust doctrine

“ But, in fact, there are two things to be done: powers to be developed––where a little of our help goes a long way; and character to be formed––and here children are as clay in the hands of the potter, absolutely dependent on their parents.
But Character is an Achievement––Disposition, intellect, genius, come pretty much by nature; but character is an achievement, the one practical achievement possible to us for ourselves and for our children; and all real advance in family or individual is along the lines of character. Our great people are great simply by reason of their force of character. ”

“ In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
2. States Parties undertake to ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being, taking into account the rights and duties of his or her parents, legal guardians, or other individuals legally responsible for him or her, and, to this end, shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures. ”

“ A man and a woman live together and bring up a family of children. Who is to determine their legal status, the terms of marriage, the rights of parenthood, the claims of childhood, the rights and obligations of the family as a part of the community? The family accumulates property in lands, houses, and movable possessions. Who will make the acquisition legal, insure property protection, and provide legally for inheritance? Every individual has his personal relation to the state, and privileges of citizenship are important. ”

“ Now wives and mothers, by neglecting their domestic duties and the proper family discipline, fail to offer the necessary resistance to growing lawlessness and crime, aggravated, if not generated, by the false notions of freedom and equality so widely entertained. It is only by home discipline, and the early habits of reverence and obedience to which our children are trained, that the license the government tolerates, and the courts hardly dare attempt to restrain, can be counteracted, and the community made a law-loving and a law-abiding community. ”

“ Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend.
Outside Influence.--And here comes in the consideration of outside influence. Nine times out of ten we begin to do a thing because we see some one else do it; we go on doing it, and--there is the habit! If it is so easy for ourselves to take up a new habit, it is tenfold as easy for the children; and this is the real difficulty in the matter of the education of habit. ”

“ As already stated, we are morally and religiously responsible for the conduct and character assumed by our children in after life. If as parents, we have discharged our whole duty towards them, and have complied with divine instruction in accordance with Proverbs xxii. 6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” we need have no fear as to our childrens’ success in after life. ”

“ Now it is not only idle, but cruel, to say that the place and provision for such Christian instruction and formation is under the roof of the parents' home; that the best school is the family. This is indeed true of the early formation by affection, influence, example, by which fathers and mothers fashion the first outlines of character, and mature them while the education of their children is advancing. ”

“ It impedes my right to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path with dangers, and by weakening and demoralizing society, from which I have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse.' A theory of 'social rights,' the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language: being nothing short of this—that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought ”

“ The tendency is to emphasize parental obligation rather than the claims parents have upon their children. As the opportunity to acquire a free hold on the public lands has diminished, the necessity of creating other opportunities by education has come to be more generally recognized. ”

“ Children are the comfort of the poor and distressed. The wedded life of a human pair may be ideal in every other respect, but one of the main functions of marriage is unaccomplished when the family remains incomplete.
48. The Right to be Well-Born.—The child comes into the home in obedience to the same primary instinct that draws the parents to each other. He calls out the affections of the parents and their intellectual resources, for he is dependent upon them, and often taxes their best judgment in coping with the difficulties that beset child life. ”

“ The physique, the temper, the disposition, the career, the affections, the aspirations of a man are all, more or less, the outcome of the discipline his parents have brought him under, or of the lawlessness they have allowed.
Discipline is not Punishment––What is discipline? Look at the word; there is no hint of punishment in it. A disciple is a follower, and discipline is the state of the follower; the learner, imitator. Mothers and fathers do not well to forget that their children are, by the very order of Nature, their disciples. ”

“ Every boy and girl is a hero in posse. There is no worse infidelity than that which gives up the hope of mending any flaw of character, however bad, in a young creature. All the same, happy those parents who have not allowed selfishness and virtue (whether in the form of truthfulness, or under some other name) to come to hand to hand conflict. It is easy to give direction to the tendencies of a child; it is agonisingly difficult to alter the set of character in a man. ”

“ As the primary step, therefore, to our advancement in all that has marked our progress in the past century, I suggest for your earnest consideration, and most earnestly recommend it, that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the legislatures of the several States for ratification, making it the duty of each of the several States to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children in the rudimentary branches within their respective limits, irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions; forbidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets; ”

“ The best correctives of the evils generated by the accumulation of wealth are not anti-trust laws or other repressive legislation, but a system of schools which provides a training for all that is equal to the best which money can buy; which discovers and reveals genius born in low estate and enables it to fructify for the common good; and which guarantees to every child the full development of all his powers. ”

“ We need only public opinion to say, “Then most surely those who have such a tendency must forgo parenthood.”
For it is public opinion that governs the world. If it were, as it will be one day—which may these pages hasten—an elementary and radical truth, as familiar and as cogent to all, man in the House or man in the public-house, as the fact of the earth's gravitation—that racial maintenance, much more racial progress, depends absolutely upon the selection of parents ”

“ The survival of those children whose parents took the best care of them has given birth to a set of powerful feelings that can be gratified only through parenthood. These feelings, sacred above all others, respond to efforts to protect the child from harm, to develop its intellect, to cultivate its manners, to intensify its affections—in a word, to make it a good man or woman, capable and high-minded. ”

“ Encourage the development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being, bearing in mind the provisions of articles 13 and 18.
Article 18 1. States Parties shall use their best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child. Parents or, as the case may be, legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. The best interests of the child will be their basic concern. ”

“ States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.
3. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. ”

“ Some of these duties are obviously contingent on the parent's ability; others are absolute and imperative. The judicious parent will, on the one hand, retain his parental authority as long as he is legally responsible for his child; but, on the other hand, will train him gradually to self-help and self-dependence, and will concede to him, as he approaches years of maturity, such freedom of choice and action as is consistent with his permanent well-being. ”

“ Every parent and every person holding substitute parental authority shall see to it that the rights of the child are respected and his duties complied with, and shall particularly, by precept and example, imbue the child with highmindedness, love of country, veneration for the national heroes, fidelity to democracy as a way of life, and attachment to the ideal of permanent world peace. ”

“ The child removal process is long, potentially taking many months before the Family Court will determine whether a child should be returned to her mother. A parent's desire to have her children returned quickly often leads to the mother being forced to follow the instructions of ACS workers in order to avoid arduous court proceedings. Even assuming that a state tribunal would eventually have an opportunity to interpret the relevant statutes, the likely harm to the plaintiffs from the delays and lack of effective representation is "so serious ... ”

“ It is also a popular theory that young children who have become a public charge will receive better care and training in a home controlled by a private society than they would in a public institution. Appropriations and legislation are also obtained by private organizations on the representation that for every dollar paid to them by the city or State an equal amount will be contributed by founders and subscribers. ”

“ Far therefore from attempting to inhibit or destroy the love of parent and child, it becomes necessary on the contrary to emphasise the need, and indeed the moral right, of every child to develop its affections in this manner, and to urge again the plea now being put forward by the more thoughtful class of social reformers, that every child should be born in such conditions as to make it possible and likely that he will receive such measure of care and affection as he stands in need of. ”