“Claiming that such and such [coercion] is ‘for the child’s own good’ is a blank check for any sort of parental tyranny imaginable, and also for some sorts that I’m sure most of us cannot even begin to imagine.”
– Mark Slagle
From the archives: 13th January 1995
[Many parents make their children do household chores against their will. Someone had presented a hypothetical desert island question, in which Couple A subject their children to involuntary servitude. Couple B, later joined by Couple C, deem that abusive. I had commented: “If… couple B were to offer asylum to your children, your children were to accept the offer, and you acted to restrain them from leaving to take the offer, then I see no reason why couple B would not be justified in mounting a mission to rescue the children from captivity and involuntary servitude. I would presume that initial attempts at a peaceful service of notice to adopt the willing children have been belligerently rebuffed (otherwise no ‘attack’ would be required, after all). If you leave open no option other than a forceful removal of the children from your captivity, then I would say that justification exists for ‘storming’ your property for the limited purpose of freeing the children.”]
I had written:
“I also, of course, welcome any comments or criticisms of my comments that anyone wishes to spin off… Let the games begin…”
Greg writes:
“Your words… not mine! ;->”
Sincerely offered.
“Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment:
I am under no obligation to anyone BUT the law in rearing that child.
There is a law that allows him to REPORT me, but unless a life- threatening situation exists, there is NO moral reason for his intrusion.
…and you had better have clear legal grounds before implementing such a plan.
As I mentioned before, if you have what you feel to be legitimate concerns about affairs in my house, there ARE legal avenues to be pursued.”
These and other statements lead me to suspect that you neglected to read the set-up carefully. What “legal avenues” are available on this hypothetical desert island where only two (or three, once family C gets there) families live in isolation from the rest of the world? In this situation, in the role of a member of family B, you are the law and you are the only legal avenue available to rescue the children in family A.
Regardless, such statements only beg the question of the ultimate authority of the law in a free society in any case. Given that the charter of the US clearly states that the government exists solely at the sufferance of and for the benefit of the citizens therein, any justifiable action of the State, as representing “the law” in this matter, is equally justified from a moral standpoint (if no longer a legal standpoint) to any individual acting to accomplish the same end. Passing off responsibility to third-party legal authorities changes nothing substantive about the question.
“My boy has chores he CLEARLY does not want to do… but I feel he needs to learn responsibility, and in MY judgement, they are only odious because they prevent him from lazing in bed in the morning. This does not make me an abusive parent. Regardless of someone else’s opinion.”
Whether or not such actions on your part are justified is a separate question from whether or not such actions constitute abuse. Past (and yet some present) generations have justified all manner of corporal abuse as justifiable on grounds that the actions are necessary to the proper development of the child into a responsible adult. Claiming that such and such a behavior is ‘for the child’s own good’ is a blank check for any sort of parental tyranny imaginable, and also for some sorts that I’m sure most of us cannot even begin to imagine.
This statement of parental prerogative that you offer only begs the original question of who gets to decide what constitutes abuse of a child, it doesn’t really answer it except to say that for your own children only you yourself know best. That answer simply won’t do for the general case, even if it holds for your own specific case (I would argue that it doesn’t, but I’m not prepared to get into a fight with you over it at this point). By extension then, what do you recommend for the case that a parent makes the claim that fifty lashes with a wet rope (or worse) is what is required to induce his child to “learn responsibility” and to prevent him from “lazing in bed in the morning”, as you put it? What can you say to this parent once you have given up the authority to intervene in his familial relations by insisting on your own unique authority over your own issue?
See also:
Mark Slagle, 1995, ‘Re: What we owe children’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/what-we-owe-children