The ethical status of children

They did not ask to be born and do not belong to us

Creating and bringing a new person into the world is undoubtedly a very one sided act. The future child is not being consulted or asked about their opinion on the matter. It is mostly done on an instinct and without much thought. Yet, it is probably one of the most consequential actions a person can do in their lives. No doubt evolution has designed it that way, or there wouldn't be many of us around to ponder this question. However, the fact that we are a product of some biological process does not mean we have to be slaves to this process. What matters is who we are now, rather than how we came along. Once we have the capacity to think and ponder about these questions, we have some obligation to do so.

Whatever the morality of having kids is, I think one thing seems to be pretty clear. If you create and bring a new person into the world it is an obligation of yours to take care of their most basic needs. If you do not have the resources or the patience to do so, you should not be in the business of creating new people. What these basic needs are could be a matter of some discussion, but they plausibly include basic physical needs such as nourishment, shelter, physical security, as well as emotional needs that are necessary for a healthy mind and soul, such as love, human interaction, freedom, mental stimulation, and later on, sexual satisfaction.

Taking care of these basic needs is a tall order and hence the immense responsibility that comes with creating a kid. Since society has a manifest interest in and benefits from the creation of kids, it should probably shoulder some of these responsibilities. The first way it could do so is by ensuring the human rights of children, freedom from abuse and oppression. Children should be treated by society with the same respect that it should afford its adult members. In this regard society should at some point squarely face the reality of the quite severe lack of rights children face in today’s world, even the developed one.

Children’s rights should in fact be at the center of the next frontier of the civil rights movement. Unfortunately there is still a pervasive blindness in our modern culture in regards to this area, which is the result of the bent balance of power between adults and children. Power corrupts, but mostly because it blinds. The human rights status of children today is similar, if not worse, than the one women suffered in previous centuries and millennia. They have no voting rights and political power, no real property rights, restricted mobility due to no driving privileges, systemic repression of their sexuality, and severe restriction in their freedom and autonomy, not least through education laws that force them into nondemocratic and oppressive institutions, robbing them of their autonomy over their time and lives. It is in fact an absurdity of modern times that the institutions that are meant to prepare children for participation in modern democratic civil society are in themselves undemocratic and authoritarian.

Society should meet its ethical obligations towards new persons by, as much as possible, guaranteeing their basic needs. This includes, as mentioned earlier, nourishment and shelter. This should be achieved by guaranteeing universal basic income to all people, big enough to sustain those basic physical needs. This is not the place to discuss the details of how this obligation should be carried out. The fundamental ethical principle is that if society allows and even encourages the creation of new people it should guarantee their fundamental basic needs. Babies come into this world weak, vulnerable, cold and hungry. It is unethical to allow this to happen without such guarantee. To expect or require new people to earn their living in a world that is already dominated by adult people who have been here for a long time and gained control over all the resources is to condemn them to a form of serfdom, not unlike the old feudal system.

It probably makes sense to leave the day to day caring of children in the main to their parents. This is how nature intended it, and the way the physical, but mainly the emotional, needs of the children are probably best met, though the extended family and the tribe have always had a significant role to play as well. However it is important for parents to fight the tendency to think of their kids as ‘belonging’ to them. Their kids are persons in their own right and they do not belong to anyone. The right way of parents to think about their relation to their kids is that of guardians and take-carers, perhaps on behalf of society, but mainly on behalf of the kids themselves. It is a sacred obligation that is bestowed on them as a consequence of their decision to create those kids.

As care-takers, the first thing that should guide parents in relation to their kids is a version of the sacred oath of all other take-carers, that is, first do no harm. This means, amongst other things, that in cases of doubt it is often better to abstain from action and let things be. Do not take forceful actions that have uncertain benefits. Do not be overzealous where your knowledge is not complete. This principle points to a general guiding recommendation, if not obligation, to let the kids be, allow them to play in the rye field, as it were, without much interruption, only occasionally scurrying to catch them if they are about to run over a cliff (which would rarely happen).