Of late, I’ve been confronted far more about people claiming that parents should have vast amounts of authority over their children and their children’s education — in ways that not only disturb me, but that I think are actually un-American.
In this country, we use democracy and elections to make community decisions about values — often disputed values — and how those values should be enacted and enforced within our communities. Yeah, democracy is a really poor way to do that. Recall that Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others.”
So, we do not use the New Testament to make these decisions. We do not go to oracles or prophets. There is no supreme leader or wise person who decides these things for us. We trust the wisdom of the crowd, we use elections and our Constitution — the only founding document for our government — says quite clearly that authority to do this comes from The People, “We, the people.”
(I love the Declaration of Independence. I read it in full most years. It’s got one of my favorite lines ever, “He has plundered our seas ravaged our Coasts burnt our Towns and destroyed the Lives of our people.” Man, that’s some good rhetoric! But that’s what it is, rhetoric. The Declaration might be a founding document for our country, but it is not a founding document for our government. There is only one founding document for our government, and that’s the US Constitution — which makes clear that the government’s moral authority stems from The People.)
So, America trust the people, collectively, to make decisions about values. At the same time, however, one of the truly distinguishing characteristics about this country is how we value the individual and individualism. While “liberty" and “freedom" mean many many things, one thing that they mean in this country is that individuals should be free to engage in their own decision-making about their own private lives and property. We prize stand-out excellence and self-efficacy in this country.
There is a tension there. No doubt. Where do we draw the line between the zone of private individual freedom and the zone of the public that is controlled by the People (and their elected representatives)?
Well, that line has moved through the years, and not just in one direction. In some ways — in many ways — the private zone has expanded. But it some ways, it has shrunk. Well, not so much shrunk as better delineated that other people exist with equal moral and legal standing.
For example, at the nation’s founding, women had few rights. Very few rights. Women could not necessarily own property. When my parents were born a married woman could not get her own credit card. Oh, wait….let me correct that…when I was born, a married woman could not get a credit card in her own name. Married women did not have bodily autonomy at all, really — their husbands had virtually unconstrained control over their wife’s bodies. But we now recognize that women are people, too. Women — including married women — have all the same legal rights as men. So, the zone of private control by men has shrunk, but the zone of private control by women has expanded.
I’m not going to go into slavery and Dred Scott, but you know…
This takes us to children. They clearly should not have full control over all private decision making; they are just children. We used to set the age of majority at 21, and only just reduced it 18 for the Baby Boomers (and succeeding generations). Children have many many rights, but not real control over their lives.
That poses the question: Who should determine what is best for a child?
Now, very few parents are experts in child psychology, developmental psychology, nutrition, medicine, moral instruction, curriculum, etc.. Even those that are, well…lawyers make the worst clients, doctors the worst patients and virtually every shrink’s kid is all kind of messed up. When our emotions and sense of identity get more involved, we are often unlikely to make the best decisions. So, why should we trust that parents will always made the best decisions for kids?
Sure, we hope hope that most of the time they will make the best decisions for kids. They are usually more invested in those children than anyone else is. Most parents want what is best for the kids, at least most of the time, or at least they think they do. But all parents are fallible people. Some of them are not great people. Some of them are sometimes not great people. As a matter of convince, we have to trust them most of the time.
But should we trust them all of the time? Why should we do that?
Are children more like some piece of private property which owners have huge amounts of control over? Are they more like beloved family members, like wives? Should we trust some adult (or two) to make all decisions about a child — like husbands used to be able to do for their wives? Or, should the community be the ultimate arbiter? Should we have safety net for children, because we — as a community — value our children’s well-being that much.
Back in the day, people had to use animal abuse laws to protect children because the law did not conceive of the idea that children would have rights of protection against mistreatment by parents, just like the law did not protect women from their husbands.
Honestly, I do not trust that parents should be the final an ultimate arbiters of what is good for their children — just as I do not trust husbands to be the final arbiters of what is good for their wives.
Rather, as an American, I trust We, The People.