Do Children's Rights Override Parental Rights?

You're in a conversation and someone says, “We have to respect the rights of children. No one, not even their parents, should be allowed to interfere with their sexual autonomy. We have to let them decide who they really are.” What would you say?
 
Children's rights are absolutely crucial, but does that mean parents shouldn't be able to direct their children’s education and medical care, or be informed about the choices they're making?

No. The next time you're in a conversation and someone says that children’s rights conflict with parental rights, here are 3 things to remember. 

First, children have rights, but they're frequently misunderstood. 
Second, children have rights, including the right to life and the right to their mother and father. 
Third, children have rights, and they don't conflict with parental rights. 

Comment Policy: We encourage civil discussions. Please keep bad language, personal attacks, off-topic comments, and general bad behavior off our site.

Sources and Recommended Reading:

“Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement,” by Katy Faust and Stacy Manning

For more on how some professionals argue for children’s harmful transgender treatments despite parental objection, see: Maura Priest, “Transgender Children and the Right to Transition: Medical Ethics When Parents Mean Well but Cause Harm,” National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, February 20, 2019

For more on how some school districts hide children’s transgender identities from their parents, see:

For more on how parent’s moral obligation to care for their children correlate to children’s rights, see: Melissa Moschella, “The Rights of Children: Biology Matters,” Public Discourse, The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute, February 20, 2014

[paulacate]

All children have the right to be loved and protected by their parents. Using them for chemical and surgical experimentation is clearly unethical and abusive.

[dobettereveryday]

childrens rights do not outweigh parental rights, they’re equal right, because we are all equally human beings with human rights. What happens in a situation where an adult advocating for their parental rights against a child defending for their human rights? Does childrens rights outweigh parental rights in that situation?

[RomanumChristum]

Children have almost no rights in almost every country, including here in the US whilst we aren't used a slave to cheap labor anymore we still face the fact that we on paper have the right to all US law. However in practice parents break said laws with the societal construct of parents border line owning their children. I hope we can change this.

[hopeiswherethehomeis]

Alright, let's just ignore that societies that grant children more autonomy raise way less violent adults. (If you're actually interested, look into the Semai, by the way. There's plenty of studies and literature if you have research skills, though if you came to this video and assumed it was useful you presumably don't.) I'm sure that's not important or anything.

The process of being a child is the process of practicing being an adult person. If your entire trial run for being a person is devoid of any autonomy, it stands to reason that you won't know how to carry yourself as a grown person. Instead you end up with people who just accept that authority comes from fear and powerlessness instead of consent, who don't have the words to describe their wounds because child abuse is so hideously normalized in this country! The idea that children's rights are fundamentally aligned with parent's choices (not necessarily rights, because if children's rights and parent's choices are at odds, then obviously the parents have overstepped their rights) is so obviously, demonstrably insane. Parents hitting their children violates their rights. Parents lying to their children about the fundamental nature of reality violates their rights. Parents indoctrinating their children into cults violates their rights.

Never trust somebody who says they're doing the thinking for you, because you're being sold something. The current infeasibility for me to move countries notwithstanding, I am never going to choose to raise children in a country that hasn't ratified the UN's child's rights convention. I would care about them far too much to subject them to such a savage society.

[benfromthebunker]

I think that the video really skipped the part that the child should have the right for their safety. A child has the right not to be abused physically or sexually. As someone who works with at risk children, there are parents that I have seen that should have no right to ever contact their child again.

[jeremypenn]

What an odd and misinformed video.
*The Convention on the Rights of the Child does not mention "mother and father" anywhere. Rather, it describes the importance of "parents, legal guardians, or other individuals legally responsible for him or her." In many instances it is biological parents but adoptive parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. can also serve in the role of parents when needed and can do it effectively.
*Many children's rights DO require purchasing items so the second "rule" proposed by this video for determining if something is a right is complete nonsense. - how would a child be fed or have shelter without purchasing something? And how is a child expected to feed themselves?
*The video starts with a straw man by claiming that people are using children's rights to force gender reassignment. Children have a right to health and to have access to high quality health care which, in rare circumstances, may mean gender affirming care and helping children and families understand and respond to very real experiences of gender.
*The Convention on the Rights of the Child points out that the primary interests of the parent is "the best interests of the child." The child's needs, including being raised in a nurturing and supportive environment, are more important that a parent's commitment to a specific political ideology.

[unitymomentum]

This is definitely incorrect and disgusting toward children.

[shoob]

Children don’t owe their parents to come out to them or to tell them they are lgbt. They deserve to remain anonymous if that is their choice.

[spongeintheshoe]

You know, I would argue there’s no such thing as a “natural right, ” as rights are inherently a moral construct, and morality is something that we, as conscious beings, impose upon the universe.

This isn’t to say that rights aren’t real or shouldn’t be taken seriously, just that we shouldn’t think of them as coming from nature when nature does not in fact grant any rights to anything.

[TheBighatter]

"You're in a conversation and someone says, “We have to respect the rights of children. No one, not even their parents, should be allowed to interfere with their sexual autonomy. We have to let them decide who they really are.” What would you say?"
-No. Children are children and it's the parent's Right and responsibility to make adult decisions in the best interest of their kids until the kids are fully grown and mature enough to take agency over their own lives.

[redgrange]

Sad people use to learn this in church now less and less go to church so what you get is a society ruled by the flesh which bring severe consequences to the children born to unsaved parents. Its an old saying but it seems like its coming true "So goes the family goes the nation"

[spongeintheshoe]

2:52 Doesn’t that kind of cheapen the concept of a right? After all, if a right is, by definition, something that doesn’t need to be provided by anyone and that people can’t have differing quantities of, then that would imply that there’s no obligation to honor a person’s rights, because the very possibility that a right could be denied you means that it is, by definition, not a right.
3:25 Except that it’s impossible to sustain life without things such as food or shelter, which _do_ need to be provided.
3:28 But not everyone gets the same quantity of life. Some live over a hundred years, while others don’t live to see their first birthday.
3:48 Yes, someone _does_ need to provide parents to a child. Namely, the parents themselves, who have to provide their care to the child.
3:54 But what if one or both of those parents die in a car crash shortly after giving birth?
4:26 But if it’s up to the parents’ consciences how they fulfill their obligations as parents, what if a parent’s conscience, for instance, doesn’t have an objection to letting the child starve?
4:38 But just because you’re capable of performing the biological processes that produce offspring doesn’t necessarily imply any ability to raise them in a healthy way.

[njtpro]

keep the government outside the family nucleus. that's were the ppl draw the line!