How is the parent-child situation more complicated than the adult-adult one?
Why parenthood can seem unexpectedly challenging even if you have thought about it beforehand.
obligations
Are you advocating that the children should rule the parents?!
Life does not have to involve either ruling or being ruled. Instead, we can stand side by side with no one ruling, all of us free to be in control of our own life, solving problems individually and jointly, and having fun doing so.
In what ways is Taking Children Seriously different from simply taking everybody seriously?
That parents have obligations to their children that their children do not have to them is not because children are lesser humans. It is because we parents have freely chosen to place our children in the positions they are in, living with us instead of having been adopted at birth, say. It is we parents who have the obligations to our children, not our children who have obligations to us.
If children are people just like adults, why should we treat our children any differently from how we treat adults?
The slight asymmetry is because the parent has chosen to put the child in the situation in which the child finds herself, whereas the child has not chosen to be in that situation or to put the parent in the situation.
Wants are rightly conditioned by the rights and responsibilities
What a moral person would do, and want, depends, among other things, on what he believes the rights of the various people concerned are. And the consistency of this moral background, helps the parties to interact with each other non-coercively.
That something is legal does not make it right or best
An argument that the mere fact that something is legal does not make it right or best. Many different things are perfectly legal; not all of them are good.
Why allow minors to disregard the guidance of their elders?
Does financial supporting our children mean they must obey us? Is it right to expect quid pro quo for our support?