Where do you draw the line on children?

This seems to be a tough issue for libertarians to reconcile.  On one hand, to say that parents actually own their kids throws out entirely the libertarian philosophy of self-ownership.  If we are to argue that a child is a child because they are incapable of reason, and therefore cannot be bound by contracts and need their parents, etc. then the whole system falls apart.  Why then should a government not test its citizens to make sure they know how to reason, before permitting them to engage in contractual agreements? 

It is clear though that the parent has a role of authority over their children.  But how far does this role go? Should parents be able to spank and ground their kids?  I think so.  But should they be able to hit their kids with full force, or lock them in cages in their basement? absolutely not.  Then, if kids are permitted to refuse being locked in the basement, should they also be permitted to refuse "reasonable" disciplinary action? 

The point is, child rearing has to be included in the philosophy of liberty, and I am not sure a theory of property is sufficient in doing so.  What do you think?

Since this is the Natural Law forum, let's look at this question from that perspective. Human beings are social animals, which means that they have a natural tendency to relate to one another in a social environment of a hierarchical nature. At the base is the individual (in whom all natural human rights reside), then the family of parents and children, then the extended family, then the neighborhood, but also at this point other associations such as religious community, school community, etc. Using the principle of subsidiarity, it makes most sense for the parents of a child to have primary responsibility for their own children, and then the extended family, and so on up the hierarchy of social relationships. We tend today to ignore subsidiarity and call the police when our sensibilities on child care are disturbed by the actions of some parents, even when the actions are not causing long term physical or emotional harm to the child. This breakdown of the lower communities in society can be blamed, I believe, on the tendency of government to intrude more and more into our lives. The next important question is: when does the child become an adult in society? This can vary a great deal, depending on the society and the capabilities of the child, but the natural turning point from child to adulthood usually is indicated by the individual establishing a separate household from its parents. With today's every-increasing evidence for an epidemic of arrested development, many twenty-somethings "fail to launch", though their ability to enter into binding contracts would seem to have been reached prior to this. We tend to give rather arbitrary dates for maturation (16, or 18, or 21), but it seems that the actual point of reaching adulthood can vary a great deal.

Liberty works only if taken moderately. Creating a balance between the two extremes. The maturity of a child begins at puberty and considered an adult once they learn to live by a constitution

I think Rothbard deals with it very well in Ethics of Liberty, the chapter is here: http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

The concept of liberty is born and has developed with respect to individual's relation to government, and has no direct bearing on the parent-child relation, other than the indirect bearing insofar as it relates to the parents' right to raise their children free of government interference, to keep the government off the backs of parents. This does not mean that laws made by government for the entire society and within its proper scope, such as, for example, criminalizing murder, do not apply to parents in their relation with children. The scope of the concept of liberty covers the relation between individuals and government. To try to extend liberty to include everything is "going astray".

Eric Bal:

The scope of the concept of liberty covers the relation between individuals and government.

So the concept of liberty does not cover a privately owned slave or a man held hostage by a terrorist group ? Libertarians define liberty as: Liberty is being able to do what you want with your person and justly acquired property without interference by others using force or threat of force. The only restriction being that you cannot use your person or justly acquired property to force or threaten force on another. Perhaps you could provide us with your definition of Liberty, to prevent us "going astray"

In its most general scope, liberty is the condition of living your life free of government control. In the narrower context of the issue of liberty in the U.S. today, it devolves into a need to enforce the Constitution so as to reverse or limit the great usurpations by the runaway central government, all of which usurpations do, or tend to, unconstitutionally reduce the liberty of the American people, and a need to affirm and clarify the natural rights, which are not enumerated in the Constitution, but which are unalienable and are referred to in both the Declaration of Independence and the Ninth Amendment.

This is a tough question and I have not encountered an article, essay, or book that really gives a satisfactory answer yet. We've got more work to do.

perhaps I have not posed the question adequately. It is a crime for me to come into your home and "ground" you for doing something I thought a person ought not do (for sake of argument, let's assume this action you have taken is not illegal). However, if I ground my kids for something like eating too much ice-cream before dinner, there is not an issue. Since the philosophy of liberty states that one human being cannot own another, it would be fallacious to say that I own my kid, and therefore have the right to punish him. The two questions I have are: How does liberty reconcile this issue? and when does punishment become a crime? Nobody would go as far to say it is ok for me to beat my kid to a bloody pulp for getting a D on his report card. But then again, if we accept the idea that I may ground my kid, we invite coercion. Where is that line drawn, between disciplining a child, and committing a crime against them? I do agree that the authority given to a parent comes from the natural state of affairs... but the entire idea of liberty is based on self ownership. There must be reconciliation with this view.

Kris, perhaps the problem is that, when speaking about liberty, we are speaking about the interaction of adults.

Most cultures recognize the role of parents with regard to children. Unfortunately in the US today, the increasingly totalitarian government absorbs daily more of the roles once reserved to parents. The relationship between parent and child is not one of "ownership", since children are not property.

As far as the question of when a punishment reaches the point of becoming a crime, it is when harm is done to the child. A slap does not harm, but a broken arm would be considered harm. Part of what is missing in society today, where government has gained too large a role in society, is a proper place for customary law (as opposed to civil law), which is based on natural law, and relies on a free market system of judges. This kind of law deals with the subtleties of such distinctions as when a parent's act of punishment goes too far. Such a question cannot be answered definitively in a vacuum, which is what you seem to be seeking.

We seem to be unaware often of how much the massive role of government in our lives effects us. It greatly reduces the other normal functions of family and voluntary organizations within a healthy society. Instead, we continue to see things as always bound up with legalities, about what government diktats will or will not allow. People who lived in the early years of the US republic, such as when de Toqueville wrote his "Democracy in America", experienced a much richer social environment, one we seem to have difficulty even imagining.

Ownership of self is the basis for natural law, but also ownership of property as well, one must also take into account the rights of ownership when looking at a question such as this. Just because a child is an owner of his/her body does not mean they can run amok. As a property owner one has the right to make any arbitrary rules and consequences for violating those rules. Just as in a market run society a store owner may fine customers for double space parking or take disciplinary action for writing hot checks. Even today there are locations that will not serve if your not willing to pay the bill in cash. The more difficult aspect of consideration is when a child that is not capable of choosing to leave an abusive or harmful parent. Though it should still follow under the same laws as harming an adult. Does this mean such things as spanking or pinching is considered a violent act? Not if the consequence was known prior to the offense. The largest problem with this analogy is that a child does not get to choose which parenting style they are being reared into such as a consumer can avoid a store or property with which they don't agree with the rules. But just as a child of 5 years of age would likely not be given the choice to enforce the right to bear arms; Such is the situatIon for a child on choice of living situations until he/she can afford to leave the home. The fact is even in a market society submission to authority would not go away. The main difference is to whose authority a singular one or those of property owners. In a true market society I could even place in rental property contracts that no spanking or other use of force be used on property by renter on children. If signed could loose rental location or pay fines.

As a teacher, I tend to look at this from a developmental point of view.
 
If we can agree that rights are something with which you are born then, by definition, children have them. I have seen evidence of natural rights in very young children, so it is conceivable that they may actually be naturally-occuring (i.e. not requiring specific instruction). However, like anything children experience, there is also a question of social norms that help shape our understanding. That is something that typically requires (or at least involves) parental influence.
 
For example, property rights... Children learn very early on what belongs to them and what doesn't. (My daughter, at the age of 3 knew where every toy she owned was in the house at all times.) However, children first encounter issues when it comes time to share these things. It is at this point that parents can put things in context. What I find interesting is that no matter how much one may try to convince a child that everything is "communal property", they naturally gravitate to private ownership. (I myself try to respect that between my two kids because I want sharing to be voluntary.)
 
I don't think any research exists to back me up on this, but neither is there any which would seriously refute this premise: children instinctively develop an awareness of natural rights. I believe the role of the parent, therefore, is to provide a function of "limited government" necessary to resolve disputes that involve things like fraud (lying, stealing), etc.
 
The question, therefore, is, "At what point can we conclude that a child no longer needs this government?" After all, this is not government by consent; it's government by genetics. Traditionally, children became self-governing as they entered their teenage years (before the advent of extending childhood through the term "adolescence"). Hence, the practice of bar/bat mitzvahs and, to a lesser degree, confirmations. These practices themselves may be rather arbitrary, but on the average, they do seem about right for establishing the individual as a self-governing member of society.
 
I teach at the middle school level, which is usually the stage in life that kids are the most "difficult". Why are they so difficult? Because we treat them like kids instead of extending them the rights they naturally feel - the things that make them feel respected. As soon as I began treating my classrooms as exercises in liberty and self-governance, things improved dramatically. True, I don't have kids sitting in nice, neat little rows, quietly doing worksheets. But then I'm not trying to train the next generation of mindless automatons either (go figure!)
 
So, maybe this approach sheds some light on things. It's arguably neither philosophical nor scientific, but from my experience (both for my own children and those that I teach) it does seem to hold true.

Under a general perspective, children, as persons, have all the natural rights that adults citizens have. Their parents, however, may be viewed as a natural "local government" over them, in which the same principles apply, to an extent, as to what is legitimate government involvement and interference. Such "local government" is not perfectly analogous analogous to government in general, however, because human genetics endows parents with natural protective and nurturing instincts with respect to their children, particularly in the female genetics. This means that the parent-child relation is itself natural on a primitive level, and children have a natural right to access such genetically provided affection and support without government interference. Government criminalization of truly abusive conduct of a parent, is within legitimate government service. Where to draw the line, however, between parental prerogative and parental abuse, is a legislative prerogative, but, as a libertarian, I believe that such line-drawing should err on the side of, and be biased toward, parental prerogative. The knit of societal fabric should be built upon the family unit as the basic building block.

Extracting the relevant paragraphs from "Ethics of Liberty" makes it fairly clear what the Libertarian view is: "The right of self-ownership by each man has been established for adults, for natural self-owners who must use their minds to select and pursue their ends. On the other hand, it is clear that a newborn babe is in no natural sense an existing self-owner, but rather a potential self-owner. First, we may say that the parents of the baby become its owners. A newborn baby cannot be an existent self-owner in any sense. Therefore, either the mother or some other party or parties may be the baby's owner, but to assert that a third party can claim his "ownership" over the baby would give that person the right to seize the baby by force from its natural or "homesteading" owner, its mother. The mother, then, is the natural and rightful owner of the baby, and any attempt to seize the baby by force is an invasion of her property right. The parents may not receive the ownership of the child in absolute fee simple, because that would imply the bizarre state of affairs that a fifty-year old adult would be subject to the absolute and unquestioned jurisdiction of his seventy-year-old parent. So the parental property right must be limited in time. But it also must be limited in kind, for it surely would be grotesque for a libertarian who believes in the right of self-ownership to advocate the right of a parent to murder or torture his or her children. We must therefore state that, even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a trustee" or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother's body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child's rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc. The mother, then, becomes at the birth of her child its "trustee-owner," legally obliged not to aggress against the child's person. Apart from that, so long as the child lives at home, it must necessarily come under the jurisdiction of its parents, since it is living on property owned by those parents. Certainly the parents have the right to set down rules for the use of their home and property for all persons (whether children or not) living in that home. But when are we to say that this parental trustee jurisdiction over children shall come to an end? Surely any particular age (21,18, or whatever) can only be completely arbitrary. The child has his full rights of self-ownership when he demonstrates that he has them in nature, in short, when he leaves or "runs away" from home. Regardless of his age, we must grant to every child the absolute right to run away, to try to exist on his own. Parents may try to persuade the runaway child to return, but it is totally impermissible enslavement and an aggression upon his right of self-ownership for them to use force to compel him to return. The absolute right to run away is the child's ultimate expression of his right of self-ownership, regardless of age." Lots more interesting stuff on rights and children in the link I gave earlier.

Ownership of human bodies is slavery. You have a natural right not to be owned as the property of another. This is the essence of liberty and freedom. To introduce the concept of self-ownership of your own body is to say that you own yourself, that the owner is the property of himself. Axiomatic use of such recursive application of the ownership attribute in a system of analysis of property, causes all theorems and corollaries which may be developed therefrom, the hierarchal structure of conclusions drawn from premises, to be invalid, infected with paradoxical contradictions. The use of a self-referential axiom infected the English philosopher Bertrand Russell's opus "Principia Mathematica" with paradoxical contradictions, and similarly infected the German mathematician Greg Cantor's "Theory of the Infinite" with paradoxes. G. Spencer Brown, in his "Laws of Form" showed that self referential axioms must lead to contradictory results in any system based on Boolean logic involving only the two logic values of true and false. A well known, and simple, example, is the statement "This statement is false". If the statement is false, as it says, then it must be true, which is a contradiction; and if the statement is true, then it cannot be false as it states, which is a contradiction. Such statement is beyond the reach of any logical analysis where a statement may only be true or false. Therefore, to avoid construction of a hierarchy of concepts about ownership from being infected with contradictions, the axiom "the owner is the property of himself" must be dropped. And, I assert, it is not needed.

John S:

As a teacher, I tend to look at this from a developmental point of view...

Very interesting comment, John!

The self contradiction parameter is philosophically viable, the negation of the statement does not mean it has not come into existence; nor that its existence serves a purpose. In example to teach of false statements. If you were to release the use of persons as self owners then explain how to continue to perceive the ability to own property existent separate from the body. Secondly how would you reconcile a child's dependency and its right to self existence.

Self ownership is fundamental and logically irrefutable! Firstly it is important to correctly understand what is meant by ownership, it is simply - "The right to use". There is no contradiction in the owner and object of a right being the same thing. (If this were so then all individual rights would be impossible) The clear contradiction arises when you attempt to argue AGAINST self ownership: In order to make the claim that there is no right to self ownership (right to use ones body), one has to exercise the right to use ones body. Thereby demonstrating that such a right exists ! For a more rigorous explanation, Hoppe explains: I demonstrate that only the libertarian private property ethic can be justified argumentatively, because it is the praxeological presupposition of argumentation as such; and that any deviating, non libertarian ethical proposal can be shown to be in violation of this demonstrated preference. Such a proposal can be made, of course, but its propositional content would contradict the ethic for which one demonstrated a preference by virtue of one’s own act of proposition-making, i.e., by the act of engaging in argumentation as such. For instance, one can say people are and always shall be indifferent towards doing things but this proposition would be belied by the very act of proposition making, which in fact would demonstrate subjective preference (of saying this rather than saying something else or not saying anything at all). Likewise, nonlibertarian ethical proposals are falsified by the reality of actually proposing them. To reach this conclusion and to properly understand its importance and logical force, two insights are essential. First, it must be noted that the question of what is just or unjust or for that matter the even more general question of what is a valid proposition and what is not—only arises insofar as I am, and others are, capable of propositional exchanges, i.e., of argumentation. The question does not arise vis-à-vis a stone or fish because they are incapable of engaging in such exchanges and of producing validity claiming propositions. Yet if this is so—and one cannot deny that it is without contradicting oneself, as one cannot argue the case that one cannot argue ! Then any ethical proposal as well as any other proposition must be assumed to claim that it is capable of being validated by propositional or argumentative means. In fact, in producing any proposition, overtly or as an internal thought, one demonstrates one’s preference for the willingness to rely on argumentative means in convincing oneself or others of something. There is then, trivially enough, no way of justifying anything unless it is a justification by means of propositional exchanges and arguments. However, then it must be considered the ultimate defeat for an ethical proposal if one can demonstrate that its content is logically incompatible with the proponent’s claim that its validity be ascertainable by argumentative means. To demonstrate any such incompatibility would amount to an impossibility proof, and such proof would constitute the most deadly defeat possible in the realm of intellectual inquiry. It is also obvious that such a property right to one’s own body must be said to be justified a priori, for anyone who tried to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right of control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say, “I propose such and such.” Anyone disputing such a right would become caught up in a practical contradiction since arguing so would already imply acceptance of the very norm which he was disputing.