Parental rights

“ Rights of children in non-intact families. The general assembly hereby declares that children whose parents are dissolving or have dissolved their marriage or are separated, and children born out of wedlock, have certain inalienable rights in the determination of their continued relationship with each parent, including the right to have such determinations based upon the inherent right of the child to its inherent relationship with, and the care, companionship, control and nurture of the child by, each parent. ”

“ In cases when the court has deprived the parents of their parental rights, the court shall permit the parents to visit their children provided that such visits shall not have a harmful and prejudicial effect upon the children. ”

“ 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 parent who sedulously endeavours to form the heart and enlarge the understanding of his child, has given that dignity to the discharge of a duty, common to the whole animal world, that only reason can give. This is the parental affection of humanity, and leaves instinctive natural affection far behind. ”

“ In addition to all this, we rely exclusively on the State governments for the security of the great rights of life, liberty and property. All the valuable and interesting relations of the social state spring from them. They give validity to the marriage tie; they prescribe the limits of parental authority; they enforce filial duty and obedience; they limit the power of the master, and exact the proper duties of the servant. Their power pervades all the ranks of society, restraining the strong, protecting the weak, succoring the poor, and lifting up the fallen and helpless. ”

“ Again, the authority of parents, though the deference it begets remain to grace the relations of parents and child, is itself a provisional function, and is only successful as it encourages the autonomy, if we may call it so, of the child. A single decision made by the parents which the child is, or should be, capable of making for itself, is an encroachment on the rights of the child, and a transgression on the part of the parents. ”

“ Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be, were one of the grand ends of their being taken into the account, that of bearing and nursing children, have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection, that ennobles instinct, either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity. ”

“ If there are parents, or a parent, they or she have the right of parentage; if an adopted mother, the right of adoption. [F]
We know that the law is framed to protect the good, and the rights of parentage cannot be too carefully guarded; but to one who has not a legal mind, but only sees a little girl in danger of her life, and has to stand with hands tied by a law intended to deal with totally different matters, it seems strange that things should be so. ”

“ The duty of parents to provide for the upbringing of their children is one prescribed, not only by nature and morality, but also by the laws of human society. And yet this duty is not directly established by law; although it seems possible that children might be able to enforce by legal process the duty of their parents to exercise their parental authority in accordance with accepted rules. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In exceptional cases, where the parents for physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children, the State as guardian of the common good, by appropriate means shall endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child. ”

“ Principle 6 The child, for the full and harmonious development of his/her personality, needs love and understanding. He/she shall, wherever possible, grow up in the care and under the responsibility of his/her parents, and, in any case, in an atmosphere of affection and of moral and material security; a child of tender years shall not, save in exceptional circumstances, be separated from his/her mother. Society and the public authorities shall have the duty to extend particular care to children without a family and to those without adequate means of support. ”

“ The Guardianship of Infants Act, 1886, has increased the rights of mothers by providing that the Court, in making an order as to the custody of an infant and the right of access thereto of either parent, shall have regard to the welfare of the infants, to the conduct of the parents, and to the wishes as well of the mother as of the father. ”

“ The mother does her duty by her children as best she can. The father does his duty by his children. But we do not do our duty by our children. The relation of the State to the child is little thought of, much less understood. We have discussed it only as an alternative to the parental relation, involving the removal of the child from the home and family, and the substitution of civic for domestic care. Such a proposal naturally excites the hot opposition of parental love and instinct, and cannot stand. ”

“ Instances have occurred, when, on account of the intractable nature of father or mother, the education intended by the child has been entirely abandoned, and the parents allowed to take matters into their own hands, and govern the family as it used to be done before the new system came into vogue, But it will nearly always be found to be the case, in such instances, that the ideas of the parent concerning his rights and prerogatives in the family have been allowed to grow and take root to an extent entirely incompatible with easy removal. ”

“ Hence, the control of parents over children is based solely upon the parents' duty to educate them. This duty of education is established by nature and is guaranteed by the state. To consider the children as property of the parents is absurd. ”

“ In view of the fact that in only 14 of our States have married mothers any legal right to the custody, control and earnings of their minor children, we urge the women of the other States to work for laws giving to mothers equal rights with fathers. ”

“ Owing to their possession of parental authority, it is the duty and the right of the parents to exercise the guardianship over their children in every capacity; as the legal representatives of those of their children who are still under age, the parents are competent to act on behalf of and in the name of their children. ”

“ The father and mother have joint control of the children, but during the father's lifetime his rule is paramount. When he is dead or incapacitated parental authority remains in the mother's hands. It is her right and duty to care for the child's person, to decide where it shall live, and to superintend its education. ”

“ The considerations on account of which the granting of parental authority to the married mother is regarded as permissible, have no bearing upon the case of the unmarried mother. The interest of the illegitimate child, and, indirectly, the interest of society at large, urgently demand the securest possible guarantees that the child will be properly brought up. ”

“ Legal restrictions on minors, especially those supportive of the parental role, may be important to the child's chances for the full growth and maturity that make eventual participation in a free society meaningful and rewarding." Bellotti II, 443 U.S., at 638-639, 99 S.Ct. at 3045-3046 (opinion of Powell, J.) .↑ Under common-law principles, one parent has authority to act as agent for the other in matters of their child's upbringing and education. ”

“ If the children are the offspring of a lawful and rational marriage, there is no difficulty about this. If, however, they come from a marriage which has not been legally solemnized at first, and which, after having been solemnized, was followed by an immediate divorce, or if they are the offspring of a concubinage, the care and education of the child devolves upon the mother as the one whom nature herself has intrusted with it; for both parents—if separated—can not educate it. The father, however, contributes his share to the child's maintenance and education in money. ”

“ Neither the state, nor any citizen, nor the child itself—since it is the object of education—has a right to decide upon the principles which are to govern the education of the children; hence, the parents are the sole judges. No law dispute can arise between children who are being educated and their parents. The parents are, in this matter, the final appeal, and sovereign. The state has no more right to regulate this relation than that between husband and wife by law. ”

“ The legally grounded object of the state is, that the children shall be educated in the best possible manner. As a rule, the mother is the most proper person to educate daughters, and the father the most proper person to educate sons. General laws can take cognizance only of such rules; and hence the mother receives the daughters and the father the sons.
As a matter of course, the child generated in adultery is not to be maintained by the husband, but by its true father. ”

“ Legal separations and divorces have come to modify the quality and logical consequences of the bond. The rights of parent over the child have been even more completely qualified. The State has come in as protector and educator of the children, taking over personal powers and responsibilities that have been essential to the family institution ever since the dawn of history. ”

“ Maternal Authority.—In the matter of love for the offspring the mother, for physiological reasons (pregnancy, parturition, and lactation) , stands on a higher plane than the father. The intensity of her love for her children explains the fact that the mother neither needs nor exercises much parental authority. Moreover, inasmuch as hitherto the mother has always been in a state of greater or less subjection to the father, parental authority has at all times chiefly taken the form of paternal authority. ”

“ There may be cases in which the parents are quite blameless, and yet in the interests of the child it may be absolutely necessary to abrogate the parental authority; or, in similar cases, it may be necessary, for educational purposes, to remove the child from its home. ”

“ The child has its rights, and every child has the right to be born in honest, respectable wedlock, of parents able to give it a sound constitution and the nurture and education it requires. The child who lacks these conditions is grievously wronged by both father and mother.
THE LAW OF MARRIAGE [108] is, that a mature man and woman, with sound health, pure lives, and a reasonable prospect of comfortably educating a family, when drawn to each other by the attraction of mutual love, should chastely and temperately unite for offspring. ”

“ While, as the Court recognizes, the Federal Constitution certainly protects the parent-child relationship from arbitrary impairment by the State, see infra, at 7-8 we have never held that the parent's liberty interest in this relationship is so inflexible as to establish a rigid constitutional shield, protecting every arbitrary parental decision from any challenge absent a threshold finding of harm. [7] The presumption that parental decisions generally serve the best interests of their children is sound, and clearly in the normal case the parent's interest is paramount. ”

“ In these days, perhaps it is hardly necessary to accentuate baby’s other rights since the century of the child dawned a generation ago. To-day it is perhaps almost more important to accentuate the rights of others who exist in the neighbourhood of a baby. ”

“ But precisely because marriage puts an end to education, and because parents alone have a right to decide when the education is finished, the parents must also have the right to refuse their consent to the marriage of their children for a time, or to postpone their marriage. ”

“ A mother has rights of which no judicial decree can ever divest her, and one of those rights is the privilege of seeing her only child again. In this case my client has the law on her side, and she will appeal to it, too, if my demand meets with the same refusal as did her written request. ”

“ To return to the question of rights as affecting the unborn babe: the mother has then so much in her power that she can not only determine to a great extent what kind of infancy the child shall have, but also whether her own duties therein shall be heavy or light. ”

“ But even if it should be found that parents may have rights of a Constitutional dimension vis-à-vis their child that are separate from the child's, we would find that in the present area the individual rights of the minor outweigh the rights of the parents, and must be protected. ”