As this subject is very subjective and everyone got different beliefs and views so it is not easy. Anyway, we covered this topic last week. It’s not my conclusion but it’s more of the summary of the notes that we got.
Basically what we had covered was about how children can use their rights to get what they want, how decision made during a child will affect his/her adult life, and how much intervention from the adults is needed to provide children with an acceptably good life in the future.
There’s one thing that children have the right to request for but not the adult which is to be loved. Adults cannot sue someone for not giving them love but children can because children need to be loved.
Children are allowed to make choices if they have enough knowledge and believe that it’s for their own best interest such as the consequences of not being granted with certain thing or otherwise. The court will listen to them and consider their requests if they have enough knowledge about what they want because they have the rights to be heard just like the adults. Weight is given in accordance to the age and maturity of the children.
It is surprising that many children in the US actually brought their parents to court because they couldn’t get what they want. For example, getting contraceptive because she wanted to have sex, or the parents did not give enough love to him or her and requested that he/she doesn’t want to live with his/her parents and instead live under the care of someone else.
Adults have the responsibility to provide the best they could for the children and also to protect the children from harm. However, the the adults should not forget about his/her own welfare which many parents tend put the children welfare first before themselves.
Children should be given enough choices so that they can develop well and face the adult world in the future. Parents should give as much options as possible for their children to discover themselves based on the capabilities of the parents especially financially.
Adults tend to make decision of behalf of the children based on their own knowledge and their liking. Usually what a child grow up into is most likely influenced by how they were brought up based on the parents preference. Implanting good values in children is very important however children should be given space to discover themselves by giving enough options for them in life. Adult must choose what is best for a child and not what some imagined adult version of the child would choose for him/herself.
Besides that, parents should treat every children under their care equally.
There is a problem that is widely affected everyone in this world which is “what’s best for the child in this culture is different from another culture”. However, there’s also some conflicts or disagreements within the culture itself for example canning of children. Therefore it is not easy to determine what is the best interest for the children. So at the end, we can only make sure that whatever decision we made or actions that we take for the child or on behalf of the child must be of the best interest of the child as what the children will choose if the child is an adult.
Children have the rights to grow up, this their developmental rights. If a child cannot grow up to be an adult due to sickness, they will not have the developmental rights but this child should be allowed to live his/her life to the fullest while he/she still can. They will not have the future but they should not suffer from harm during his/her lifetime and enjoy a certain standard of life just like any other healthy children especially in getting education because learning new things is what children should be doing.
When it comes to the above issue, there’s “wrongful life” comes into the picture. Example is like when a mother is pregnant and found out that the child isn’t going to develop well when he/she is born and will suffer for his/her lifetime but the mother did not want to abort the child in her womb and took the courage to give birth to the child. When the child is born, the child suffers from pain and misery throughout his/her lifetime. In this case, some people will think that this child shouldn’t be brought into this world to suffer, this child should not exist, this child is given a wrongful life. The worst thing is that, the parents decided to bring the child to this world and ended up not being able to care for him/her and some even “threw” them away!
Then again to some people, they will not agree with this “wronglful life” theory because to them abortion is wrong, no matter how the baby in the womb is, he/she must be born into this world as he/she also human beings. Abortion would mean killing another human being.
Still, at the end, it is up to the parents decision and how responsible they are.
So, that’s the summary of last Sunday’s class. Tired… Such subjective topics, there’s so many theories involved! How am I going to score? *LOL*