Lots of different people decide to have kids. Some people have them even though they didn’t mean to.
Not everyone can give a kid everything that it might use. Of course every child would benefit from having rich parents, or highly intelligent ones, or from being afforded a lifestyle that’s conducive to safety, good mental health and the opportunity to progress to a point of autonomy.
Unfortunatley, the world just isn’t set up where every kid can have these things, and in alot of cases there is little or nothing that can be done to correct it.
So since we can’t all just stop having kids, and we can’t all be rich and highly intelligent, what sort of duties do we have toward the kids?
Should we attempt to minimize harm?
Should we point to regularities that we see in the world as being good, (or at least “not being bad”) for kids?
Are we obligated to strive for uniformity in some ways between the way some kids are raised as compared to others?
Do the parent’s rights outweigh the kid’s interests?
I’m sure there are alot of other questions that will come up.
For now I’m just checking the water to see just what people here think about these.
Yes, but it can’t be completely done. When harm occurs, it should be used as a life lesson, i.e. how to deal with such things.
It depends. It was regular in Nazi Germany for children to join the Hitler Youth. Was that good for them? Debatable. I think parents have to use their judgement up to the point that children can start deciding for themselves. Teach free thinking and questioning.
Every one is different, so uniformity stifles creativity and free thought. Parents are obliged to do what they think is best for their child, not what the majority think best. However obviously cases will arise where what the parent thinks best isn’t actually best. It’s a tough call, but I think evidence on child development and child nurturing can help greatly. Any parent that deliberately ignores the obvious benefits of things such as breast feeding, immunisation, uncensored education, are not doing what is best for their child.
Once the child is born the child’s rights are the most important. I don’t know exactly how many rights parents should have. One example I can think of is a parents right to see their child. This should only be exercised if it is in the child’s best interest, for instance if the father was a child rapist then it might not be in the child’s best interests to see the father.
Your post raises interesting questions. I assume these were provoked by the transsexual couple thread? As a father myself, I have to think every day about how best to raise my kids. Every little thing I do affects them. All I can do is raise them the best I can, and obviously this will be in accordance with what I think is right and wrong. But I also think children should be encouraged to make their own minds up about things, and taught from an early age to question everything. My girlfriend and I purposely didn’t baptise our kids, because we don’t believe in organised religion, but if my daughter were to indicate to me latter in life she wished to be a Catholic, as long as that is what she wanted I wouldn’t stop her. Essentially a child’s life is their own. Parents should help guide them, until they are old enough to live it themselves.
Smears - the only thing about minimising harm is that this could leads to parents protecting their children form all risk. That produces insecure, tentative and dependent children. It produces the “playgroup” kid - it limits experience, perhaps to the detriment of the kid. But this is difficult to define. I might allow my kid to take certain risks - and in doing so i am trying to minimise future “harm”. It’s a matter of focus.
I really hate to see kids “too” protected, though. Kids grow up more slowly than in generations past, now. But maybe speed isn’t everything. I still bristle at the kid who has an entirely structured and “safe” childhood, though.
On the assumption that African kids are human as well, doesn’t the second point kinda shit all over the first point??
I accept that we have limited resources and limited energy and can’t solve all of the world’s ills so have to prioritise our concerns but that second quote just sounded awful to me. Yeah you don’t have to be concerned with the problems in Africa and elsewhere every waking minute to be a decent person but I would have just thought it’s human to have a bit of compassion or at least show a bit of respect. I mean is it just the kids in Africa you don’t give a shit about? How about Canadian kids? French kids? If a kid is abused in France or murdered that doesn’t bring out your righteous outrage that has been seen in certain threads? Um how about if there was a problem with African kids having transexual parents would that be more outrageous and worth worrying about than if their parents were dead from AIDS?
If the French of Canadian kids were white like me I’d care. I can only have compassion for member of my ingroup.
If African transexuals want to have kids then that’s just fine. And as far as respecting them goes, I mean come on, it’s not like they’re going to go home, sign on to the internet, come to ILP and get their feelings hurt ya know.
Interesting…so you give a shit about white kids but not kids from other races. So just clear it up for me, what about black American kids??
Your point about not needing to respect African suffering is both repugnant and fallacious. I am black, not African, but I have a heritage and I’m sure there are Africans (and Europeans and Americans for that matter) who have access to internet and could find your comments offensive. You are of course free to express your views and don’t worry I can’t imagine anyone is gonna,as you say, be crying over hurt feelings but that isn’t the point. I found what you said offensive basically cos it demonstrates such a fucked up way of thinking and I felt the need to respond. It is what your post represents rather than the post itself which I felt a little disturbed by.
And one more thing that I’m a little concerned by,
That just sounds fucking lazy and some kind of attempt at justification for views bordering on racism. I guess I’m lucky I have Asian side to my family, of course I have black and yeah through marriage even white and to be honest I don’t exclude people from my family ingroup based on colour and I see no reason to exclude people from my ‘group’ outside of my family based on colour. The ironic thing is your first quote I agreed with wholeheartedly, y’know the we are all human so all humans are our own. Primarily I relate to my humanity, culture is secondary and colour is a non-issue.
No worries smears, what you wrote just didn’t sit right with me and to be honest I do believe you justify how you view the world through means principally to make life easier for you and for you to i dunno, be happy i guess,and because it seems you have a brain you have the ability to do that. But I just feel sometimes we have to challenge our views even if the consequence is we have to make an effort to change.
You didnt want me to get OJ on your ass so I got I dunno…a bit Oprah… hope thats ok!
