Children's rights

“ The children who have to think of their clothes before playing with the dogs, digging in the sand, helping the stableman, working in the shed, building a bridge, or weeding the garden, never get half their legitimate enjoyment out of life. And unhappy fate, do not many of us have to bring up children without a vestige of a dog, or a sand heap, or a stable, or a shed, or a brook, or a garden! Conceive, if you can, a more difficult problem than giving a child his rights in a city flat. ”

“ So urgent a question has it become in many Christian lands that this has been aptly called “the age of the child.” In our own land the needs and rights of the child are being discussed on every hand, and through the Public Schools, Juvenile Courts, Juvenile Commissions, Federal Children’s Bureau, Playground Movement, Child Welfare Exhibits, Child Labor laws, and numerous other agencies we are striving to deal with the problem that involves the whole future of our land for weal or woe. ”

“ Our generation, said to have developed a new enthusiasm for the possibilities of child life, and to have put fresh meaning into the phrase “children’s rights,” may at last have the courage to insist upon a child’s right to be well born and to start in life with its tiny body free from disease. ”

“ It might seem, therefore, to be a duty with which positive law should have nothing to do, any more than with the duty of striving after a noble life. On the other hand, the neglect of it does tend to prevent the growth of the capacity for beneficially exercising rights on the part of those whose education is neglected, and it is on this account, not as a purely moral duty on the part of a parent, but as the prevention of a hindrance to the capacity for rights on the part of children, that education should be enforced by the state. ”

“ RIGHTS.--Children, as members of the school, have important rights and duties. It is the right, one of the highest rights, of every child to attend the full session of the public school. Whoever prevents him from exercising this right commits an offense against the child and against the State. The State taxes its citizens to maintain a system of schools for the benefit of every child, and so every child has a right to all the State has provided for him. ”

“ To enable them to attain these ends, parents are endowed with certain rights. Just as, in the matter of public education, the State enforces upon the child a minimum of school attendance, even against the wishes of the parents, so also, in the general upbringing of children, the State enforces a certain standard, with which all parents have to comply. ”

“ In the modern State, the following ideas as to parental authority are generally prevalent. Parental authority involves duties as well as rights. Our laws give rights to parents only in order to enable them to fulfil their duties. They are, in a sense, plenipotentiaries of the State, entrusted with the duty of bringing up their children in a state of bodily, mental, and moral health, and of ensuring that these children shall develop in such a way that they will be useful to society. ”

“ The children, therefore, retain all their original rights as regards their life, their health, their fortune (if they already possess any) , and should not be limited even in their freedom, except in so far as the parents may think necessary, partly for their own development, and partly to preserve the newly-arisen domestic relations, while such limitations should not extend beyond the time required for their training. Children must never be compelled to actions which extend in their immediate consequences beyond this period of development, or even over the whole life. ”

“ Justice and equity, the rights of humanity, require a broader basis than blood relationship. Children are part of humanity, and the largest part. Few of us realise their numbers, or think that they constitute the majority of human beings. ”

“ They are children of God and heirs to His heavenly kingdom. It is not on the State, but on parents, that God imposed the duty to educate their children, a duty from which no State can dispense, nor can fathers and mothers relieve themselves of this duty by the vicarious assumption of the State. They have to give a severe account of their children on the Day of Judgment, and they cannot allow any power to disturb them in insisting upon their rights and making free use of them. The State has no more authority or control rightfully [Pg 154] over our children, than over a man's wife. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to the final adoption of the kindergarten there is a preliminary question which goes straight to the root of the whole matter. At present the state accepts the responsibility of educating children after an arbitrarily fixed age has been reached. Ought it not, rather, if it assumes the responsibility at all, to begin to educate the child when he needs education? ”

“ If we respected the rights of children, we should educate them so as to give them the knowledge and the mental habits required for forming independent opinions; but education as a political institution endeavors to form habits and to circumscribe knowledge in such a way as to make one set of opinions inevitable.
The two principles of justice and liberty, which cover a very great deal of the social reconstruction required, are not by themselves sufficient where education is concerned. Justice, in the literal sense of equal rights, is obviously not wholly possible as regards children. ”

“ At a minimum, our prior cases recognizing that children are, generally speaking, constitutionally protected actors require that this Court reject any suggestion that when it comes to parental rights, children are so much chattel. ”

“ The courts have the power to declare that through the loss of civil rights a man has become unfitted for the position of an official guardian; a teacher in a State school loses his position ipso facto if convicted of a criminal offence; why should not the criminal courts have the power to deprive parents, foster-parents, and private teachers of their “office,” and to declare them to be unfitted to hold it?
The great majority of punishable offences against children are committed against children of the lower classes. ”

“ Yet the development of individuality is not forgotten, for "our power as individuals depends upon our recognition of the rights of others."
It is true that the social problem is an intricate one and cannot be worked out, even partially, at any stage of education, unless the leader of the children be a true leader, and be enthusiastically convinced of the essential value of the principles on which the problem is based. ”

“ The parents of the other child were warned of the lamentable results of this gloomy training, and they said one to another: "Our darling shall be free as air; his duties shall be made to seem like pleasures, or, better still, he shall have no duty but his pleasure. He shall do only what he wills, that his will may grow strong, and he can but choose the right, for he knows no evil. ”

“ There, again, the stream may flow forth in either, but not in both, of the channels, the egoistic or the altruistic. The child's demand for justice may be all for himself, or, from the very first, the rights of others may be kept before his eyes. ”

“ The only ground for the control of parents over their children is the need of education. When the ground ceases, so does the grounded. When the education is completed, the child becomes free. But only the parents can decide when it is completed, since only they have preestablished its final end. If they hold that the child is sufficiently educated, they voluntarily give it freedom. They should, indeed, increase the freedom of the child constantly during the progress of education, as one of the rules of such education, and not as a right which the child has ”

“ It is true, the kindergartner has the child in her care but three or four hours a day; it is true, in most instances, that the home influences are all against her; it is true that the very people for whom she is working do not always appreciate her efforts; it is true that in many cases the child has been "born wrong," and to accomplish any radical reform she ought to have begun with his grandfather ”

“ The education of a child is now largely regulated by statute.
A parent may protect his child, even a homicide is justifiable. A parent can also correct his child. Says an excellent authority: "The rights of parents result from their duties. As they are bound to maintain and educate their children, the law has given them such authority, and, in support of that authority, a right to the exercise of such discipline as may be requisite to the discharge of the sacred trust." See Adopted Child; Husband and Wife. ”

“ It is by no means necessary to argue over every little service, but a few test cases keep in mind the idea of justice. If what a child wants will give more pleasure to the child than trouble to the adult, do it. If it is more trouble to the adult than pleasure to the child, do not do it; and let the child understand, first, last, and always, the balance of human rights.
I knew a girl of thirteen who had not yet learned to keep herself covered at night. She slept with her mother ”

“ For these reasons, if our legal system makes provision for the protection of adults, a fortiori must it do so, and to a greater extent, in the case of children. From all these considerations it follows that the most important relationships of child-protection are not, as is commonly assumed, with criminal law and with local administrative activity, but with civil law and individual rights. The kind and degree of child-protection, depend chiefly upon the mutual relationships existing between the State and the family. ”

“ The state has the right to watch that the child is -educated; hence, also, the right to prevent any use of the child which would evidently annul all education. The state can not, therefore, allow children to be used as property; for example, a son to be sold into slavery.
XVII.
Only free persons are responsible before the law. Children are not free, for they are under the guardianship of their parents. Their father—as equally the representative of their mother—is thus their legal guardian. They have no rights for him to defend, since they are not yet themselves citizens ”

“ He is by and by to come in contact with a world where cause and effect follow each other inexorably. He has a right to be taught, and to be governed by the laws under which he must afterwards live; but in too many cases parents interfere so mischievously and unnecessarily between causes and effects that the child's mind does not, cannot, perceive the logic of things as it should. We might write a pathetic remonstrance against the Decline and Fall of Domestic Authority. There is food for thought, and perhaps for fear, in the subject ”

“ Education requires also a fixed plan and uniformity of principle, according to which the children are to be educated. This plan would be disturbed if strangers had a right to interfere, and to influence the children. Complaint can be preferred against such interference, and the law must decide in favor of the true parents. ”

“ Children and young people shall have the right to develop their personality, to a non-violent upbringing and to protection from violence, neglect and exploitation. The state and society shall protect them from threats to their physical, mental and psychological wellbeing. The state and society shall heed and safeguard their rights, shall provide them with the living conditions befitting their age and shall support them on the basis of their aptitudes and abilities. ”

“ The kindergarten attempts a rational, respectful treatment of children, leading them to do right as much as possible for right's sake, abjuring all rewards save the pleasure of working for others and the delight that follows a good action, and all punishments save those that follow as natural penalties of broken laws,—the obvious consequences of the special bit of wrong-doing, whatever it may be. ”

“ The most elementary natural law exacts that all children, whether "legitimate" or "illegitimate," should have the same social rights, and that they should bear either the name of their real father or that of their mother ”

“ The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the State and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions. ”

“ Nowhere are these extremes more noticeable than in the government of children. Centuries ago, in the patriarchal period, the father of the family seems also to have exercised the functions of a criminal judge; but the uniting of the two sets of duties in one person does not appear to have inspired the children with insurmountable awe, for laws are found both in Numbers and Deuteronomy fixing the penalty of disobedience, and of the striking of a parent by a child. ”