Children: The Right to an Open Future
Most children will eventually develop a level of physical and rational capacity such that they will be able to make largely independent, informed choices in line with their own conception of the good. The obvious point, though, is that they aren’t there yet. There seems at least a strong intuitive case for limiting their rights until they have the capacity to make choices for themselves about their own life. What principles ought to guide that paternalism, however? Is it permissible for parents to indoctrinate a child into an extremist religion, for instance? Or, to phrase the issue the other way around, is it repressive for children to be raised in a society dominated by particular gender norms?
One answer that some liberals have argued for (starting with Joel Feinberg) is that a child deserves a right to an open future.
Societies give individuals rights in order to maximise their prospects of leading a good life. - The best societies are those comprised of flourishing individuals who are allowed to develop their own good in their own way. - We therefore grant rights to individuals in order that they can grow to become rational, free and autonomous; three essential preconditions of individual development (check out the liberty argument for further explanation of this premise). - For instance, a right to free speech is essential to allow adults to grow to become rational and autonomous individuals. - This then maximises individual flourishing and, in turn, healthy societies. - Liberty (understood as rationality, autonomy and freedom) is thus the precondition of social utility and the ground of all rights.
This analysis works very well for the liberties we permit to adults with full cognitive capacity.
Premise: Children do not have full rights-bearing capacity because of certain intellectual and physical constraints – products of their age and relative inexperience. - A question therefore arises: what does a liberal society owe to those who do not yet, but inevitably will, have the capacity to become rational, free and autonomous.
The obvious liberal answer is that we owe children a right to an open future. - That is, a future that preserves for them a maximal number of options and liberties. - The exercise of those liberties will then facilitate their fullest development in accordance with the principles that I’ve just outlined.
Respecting a right to an open future in turn requires a respect for two further types of rights. - Dependency rights – those that are derived from a dependence upon others for the basic needs of existence – food, shelter, protection etc… - Dependency rights are important because a child’s capacity for autonomy (i.e. their capacity to independently distinguish between various options) requires that child is raised with the physical capacity for intellectual development. A child born into pain and misery and without its basic needs catered for will not grow to full capacity and will not achieve his basic goods. - Rights-in-trust – rights that a child is not yet capable of exercising but which it will have a right to in the future (e.g. voting). Acting in respect of this right is to guarantee that, when a child is old enough, it will be able to exercise those rights (e.g. voting). - These are distinctive in that they impose duties upon others in advance of the subject being able to exercise those rights – “a right to have a right”. - For instance, a rights-in-trust holder is deprived of the ability to exercise her right to free religious observation and practice if she is prevented from freely forming the necessary knowledge base, which allows them to select their faith or lack thereof. - These are also central – the rights and liberties currently enjoyed by those who have reached the age of the majority are crucial for individual flourishing. We want society to flourish into the future. Therefore we need to keep those options open for children in order to preserve a utility-maximising society.
The Right to an Open Future has a Number of Implications. These two are drawn from Mianna Lotz’s excellent article, referenced below (though some of the conclusions are adapted and changed from her analysis).
Approximate parent-neutrality. - By imposing one particular set of values upon children, adults impede their capacity to develop in the future. - Rationally, parents inculcate certain moral assumptions into the psyche of their children. For instance, a very religious family that only allows their children to consume material that advocates right-to-life, limits that child’s future in two ways.
It prejudices them against exercising the option to have an abortion.
It does not allow that child the capacity to make a rational choice about the issue when they are older because their unshakable moral assumptions will be steeped in the particular ideology. The rationality of that child is therefore permanently damaged. - Therefore, parents ought to be as approximately neutral as possible – exposing their child to as many experiences and points of view as possible without didactically instructing their children to believe in any one particular faith. That child must always understand that the option to disagree remains open to them, otherwise it is violation of their right to an open future. - The implications of this are extremely wide-ranging – religious schools, gay re-education camps, raising children to be any religion in particular etc…
Approximate state-neutrality. - The state is a powerful inculcator of values in itself, but also in the different views and practices that it tolerates. - Therefore, the extent to which children will develop to be rational, autonomous and free agents is limited entirely by what the state permits them to consume. - The state must permit a maximum possible level of discourse and discussion about pragmatic and metaphysical ideas in order that children might be able to make an informed and rational choice. To do anything less is a violation of that child’s right to an open future.
Cheers!
Lachlan
Further reading
Mianna Lotz, ‘Feinberg, Mills, and the Child’s Right to an Open Future’ (2007), 37 (4) Journal of Social Philosophy 537.