Do children deserve autonomy?
So this discussion really comes from the idea that we assume that humans who have existed for a certain period of time, are not subject to the same rules of life that the rest of us have. We assume blindly perhaps that this is for their own benefit, yet we also tend to believe that we deserve some autonomy over ourselves, our environments and our bodies.
So I am going to go about some definitions of autonomy, and of childhood. Raise some questions and let it go from there :)
some definitions
Autonomy
- is largely defined as the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision, or some form of self governance. (which i’d argue none of us are really able to do, but the question is whether certain individuals are more or less able than others).
- Autonomy means behaving and thinking independently of others. Autonomous people aren’t controlled by other people or external forces. Instead, they self-govern
- a strong sense of confidence and comfort in making choices in accordance with their own desires – also called autonomy – is a critical life skill for our children to begin to understand and embody.
- Autonomy has traditionally been thought to connote independence and hence to reflect assumptions of individualism in both moral thinking and political designations of political status. In recent decades, however, theorists have increasingly tried to structure the concept so as to sever its ties to this brand of individualism.
In the western tradition, the view that individual autonomy is a basic moral and political value is very much a modern development. Putting moral weight on an individual’s ability to govern herself, independent of her place in a metaphysical order or her role in social structures and political institutions is very much the product of the modernist humanism of which much contemporary moral and political philosophy is an offshoot. As such, it bears the weight of the controversies that this legacy has attracted. The idea that moral principles and obligations, as well as the legitimacy of political authority, should be grounded in the self-governing individual, considered apart from various contingencies of place, culture, and social relations, invites skeptics from several quarters. Autonomy, then, is very much at the vortex of the complex (re)consideration of modernity.
Put most simply, to be autonomous is to be one’s own person, to be directed by considerations, desires, conditions, and characteristics that are not simply imposed externally upon one, but are part of what can somehow be considered one’s authentic self. Autonomy in this sense seems an irrefutable value, especially since its opposite — being guided by forces external to the self and which one cannot authentically embrace — seems to mark the height of oppression. But specifying more precisely the conditions of autonomy inevitably sparks controversy and invites skepticism about the claim that autonomy is an unqualified value for all individuals.
So on one hand we have autonomy and self governance which historically have gone hand in hand with individuality and MIGHT be is required to avoid repression.
Childhood
The notion of a child is both historically and culturally conditioned. But exactly how the conception of childhood has changed historically and how conceptions differ across cultures is a matter of scholarly controversy and philosophical interest.
It has been argued partly on the evidence of depictions of infants in medieval art, that the medievals thought of children as simply “little adults.” Shulamith Shahar (1990), by contrast, finds evidence that some medieval thinkers understood childhood to be divided into fairly well-defined stages. And, whereas Piaget claims that his subjects, Swiss children in the first half of the 20th Century, were animate in their thinking (Piaget, 1929), Margaret Mead (1967) presents evidence that Pacific island children were not.
Today.. the dominant view of children embodies what we might call a broadly “Aristotelian conception” of childhood. According to aristotle, the Final Cause of a living organism is structure and function that organism normally performs when it reaches maturity. Thus a human child is an immature specimen of the organism type, human, which, by nature, has the potentiality to develop into a mature specimen with the structure, form, and function of a normal or standard adult.
Two modifications of this Aristotelian conception have been particularly influential in the last century and a half. One is the 19th century idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (Gould, 1977), that is, that the development of an individual recapitulates the history and evolutionary development of the race, or species (Spock, 1968, 229). This idea is prominent in Freud (1950) and in the early writings of Jean Piaget (see, e.g. Piaget, 1933). Piaget, however, sought in his later writings to explain the phenomenon of recapitulation by appeal to general principles of structural change in cognitive development (see, e.g., Piaget, 1968, 27).
The other modification is the idea that development takes places in age-related stages of clearly identifiable structural change. This idea can be traced back to ancient thinkers, for example the Stoics (Turner and Matthews, 1998, 49). Stage theory is to be found in various medieval writers (Shahar, 1990, 21–31) and, in the modern period, most prominently in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s highly influential work, Emile (1979). But it is Piaget who first developed a highly sophisticated version of stage theory and made it the dominant paradigm for conceiving childhood in the latter part of the 20th Century (see, e.g., Piaget, 1971).
Matthews (2008, 2009), argues that a Piagetian-type stage theory of development tends to support a “deficit conception” of childhood, according to which the nature of the child is understood primarily as a configuration of deficits—missing capacities that normal adults have but children lack. This conception, he argues, ignores or undervalues the fact that children are, for example, better able to learn a second language, or paint an aesthetically worthwhile picture, or conceive a philosophically interesting question, than those same children will likely be able to do as adults. Moreover, it restricts the range and value of relationships adults think they can have with their children.
So it seems this very idea of childhood has varied over time and space, and similarly it seems that the extent to which we grant young humans autonomy is culturally determined also
- Here in the US there is variations determined by the law, but actual autonomy varies according to family, circumstance, financial freedom, religion constraints etc etc
- According to Islamic jurisprudent upon reaching the age of Taklif (15 full lunar years for boys and 9 full lunar years for girls) no one can be treated as incompetent based on mental immaturity unless his or her insanity or mental immaturity is proven.
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QUESTIONS
1/ If we deny the autonomy of young humans based on their inability to know what is good for themselves or for others, should we assess all humans in the same way?
2/ What is the role of lying in autonomy of young humans?
- In How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time, philosopher Iain King developed an ‘Autonomy Principle’, which he defines as “Let people choose for themselves, unless we know their interests better than they can.”[6] King argues it is not enough to know someone else’s interests better than the person; autonomy should only be infringed if a person is unable to know their own interests on a particular matter.
- So i want to touch on the idea of how when we lie to children perhaps we are preventing them making informed decisions about themselves.
- Given that the ability to be autonomous and make self serving decisions, depends on context and being well informed, what does it mean for our children\s autonomy that we lies to them? What are the lies that we tell children and do they really serve them?
- - we lie to them about the existence of father christmas, the tooth fairy, unicorns and so on, and why? there is plenty of mystical and wondrous reality out there to inspire their young minds. what is the purpose of this giant lie? we tell children they can be whatever they want, that we won’t die, that it will all be ok. do these tales serve them? who decided that children weren’t ‘ready’ for the truth?
3/ What are the ways in which deny autonomy in young humans and do we agree with these?
- What of the small humans that have reached a stage where they are capable of making their own autonomous decisions about their bodies - what is it to be stuck even for 2 years say unable to have sex, choose your own wake up cycle, chose your own food etc.
- we deny their internal states The autonomous life skill of emotional wellness is not about stifling or even filtering emotions.It’s about facing and managing emotions.
- We deny their sexuality
- Sexuality in Children, Renshaw, Domeena C.Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, 5, 10, 1, Oct 71 “The author concludes this discussion by suggesting that when sexual problems bring children to doctor the great majority represent a crisis not in the child but in a parent or neighbor. (Author)”
- Force certain medical procedures on them
- Force racial and gender constructs apon them.
4/ Is automy good for young humans?
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Child rearing should aim to develop “a well-rounded individuality” and not “a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist.” [Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks, p. 108]
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Study 1 Taken together, the studies indicate that the best parenting tactics probably fall in the middle of the spectrum (authoritative vs permissive). Indeed, studies have shown that a protective factor against being bullied or becoming a bully is having parents who are facilitative, meaning warm and responsive to their children and encouraging of appropriate levels of autonomy (rather than being either controlling or overly permissive). A 2015 study of 215 grade school children, reported in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, found that bullied children were consistently rated by teachers as having less facilitative parenting than non-bullied children. A 2016 study from the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry followed kids for five years and found that those whose parents supported autonomy when the kids were four or five years old bullied less over time than those whose parents showed less support for autonomy.
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Study 2 Barber and Olsen (1997) found that greater autonomy provided by parents was associated with lower levels of antisocial behavior among both boys and girls after controlling for economic well-being, race, child depression, family connection, family regulation and a host of peer, school and neighborhood factors. Thus the above studies suggest that parenting that is less authoritarian, with consistent structure and support for autonomy might be related to children’s reduced involvement in bullying. However, these studies were cross-sectional and did not address the clinically relevant question of whether parenting is related to a change in bullying over a period of time.
The bottom line? “If you do not wish to raise a bully, do not bully your own kids,” says Julie A. Patock-Peckham, a psychology professor at Arizona State. “An authoritative parenting style, on the other hand, is protective against so many negative psychological outcomes that people who wish to become better parents should take classes on how to be more authoritative with their children.”
NOTES
External forces
Surplus repression
At what point can children assess risk? Teenager feels immune at a certain point.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-isenman/parenting-humor\_b\_2615932.html
Do parents have rights over their children? Should the state play a role, or other humans?
- The state’s job is to craft adults that craft good children.
- Policing of families
Science fiction about the future pf parenting
Licences for kids or training for parents
Raising a child is not a technical thing, or a skill, we should change the world, not the parenting - the world is not fit for children
Distinction between not fit to have a child, but there can be other options for children
Children do not consent to being brought into this world and then they have no agency for 18 years
Why is it a binary of in family or not, perhaps children should be given mobility to chose where to be?
Child labour - need money to get about, is it really a bad things that children can’t work, bc it limits their ability to move about in the world.
The world is designed to accommodate producers or consumers, and children, elderly, or disabled, homeless people don’t fit into either of those categories.
Can our communes, which are places where you neither have to be a producer or a consumer to enjoy and exist, can be places built for children?
What is the role of the state in this? There are critical theories that suggest the state is only there to reproduced
‘Counter state’ - eg landless peasants movement - use critical pedagogy to raise their children (the pedagogy of the oppressed) which makes you ask a series of questions, instead of giving you answers.
Montesori/ Summer Hill Schools
Layfayette moor house - the purple people
How to rebel for children
If we are anti school, how do we get our children to socialise?
Theater of the oppressed, radical brownies, radical monarchs
The bad lessons we teach childrens
Sex and death are not part of your life from the get go,so then kids learn about this through fiction and media.
A parent shouldn’t make limits or borders for us, a parent can tell you what their limits are.
Foucault - Power is more effective when it feels like it comes from within you - today’s forms of power are softer such as governmentality.
What is freedom?
Actions
Ana - build a reading list for children
How to rebel effectively
The art of being governed otherwise - for children