Libertarianism doesn't apply to children

Megan McArdle has a great post which articulates something I have been kicking around for a while but never managed to put in coherent form.

You cannot morally treat children, or fetuses, as if they have the same rights and obligations as human adults; they have fewer freedoms, but more entitlements. Children are not only uniquely vulnerable, but also uniquely innocent; that fetus did not ask to be in your body, and has no means at his disposal to get out and stop bothering you. Trying to reason his fate from principles designed for consenting adults is neither practical nor morally just. Moreover, any society that did try to treat children and fetuses as adults, in the way that my commenters are advocating, would not be long for this earth. Evolution does not take cognizance of how beautifully consistently you have reasoned from first principles when it decides what behaviours will survive.

She makes specific reference to the abortion debate but this is something which applies in many other areas, including cases of child abuse or neglect. Hardcore Libertarians would just love to able to apply a simplistic non-aggression principle to everything, or cannot accept that there might be a role for a government agency in safeguarding children's welfare and so find themselves clinging to contorted positions whereby children are either property of their parents and implicitly theirs to abuse as they see fit, or free agents who implicitly have the "rights" to spurn school, refuse medical treatment and have sex with dirty old men.

Comments

[Ciarán]

Nice post Frank. I think I agree with you, although it doesn't strike me as being a black & white issue. I don't suppose it's logical to say that there's a tipping point past which an individual is to be regarded as an adult and therefore, presumably, fully autonomous and rsponsible.

Perhaps the way to think about it to recognise that, as they grow older, children are increasingly capable of reflecting on a wider range of their own interests and how they feel they ought to be treated.

Not sure how that would work out in practice, but there might be something to it.

What do you think?

[Frank McGahon]

I think that the issue of when a child becomes an adult is an important one and is obfuscated or elided entirely under most of the standard issue libertarian formulations. One of the attractive aspects of libertarianism to me is the notion that adults shouldn't be treated as children (by a paternalistic government). Too often the corollary is ignored which is that because we don't treat adults as children, we shouldn't treat children as adults.

I don't suppose it's logical to say that there's a tipping point past which an individual is to be regarded as an adult and therefore, presumably, fully autonomous and rsponsible.

I think it's fair to consider the age of consent as a kind of semi-arbitrary Schelling point. It is true that a person on the eve of their eighteenth (or seventeenth, or sixteenth) birthday is not significantly different from the "adult" who wakes up the next morning. But I think we would all agree that that person aged 24 is an adult who was a child when she was 11. There will undoubtedly be some 16 year olds who are more adult than some 20 year olds, there's obviously more of a grading than a strict line but a line, however arbitrary is the most practical way of determining adulthood.

Perhaps the way to think about it to recognise that, as they grow older, children are increasingly capable of reflecting on a wider range of their own interests and how they feel they ought to be treated.

I remain open to the idea that, in principle, some test of adulthood other than age might apply but it's hard to see in practice how this would work. The virtue of the age line is that it is indisputable. I think what you are getting at, though is some sort of graded implementation of adult rights and responsibilities which is probably even harder to get to work.

[Ciarán]

I agree that some sort of general principle would be really difficult to formulate, so the age measure, whilst arbitrary, might be the best we can do. Nevertheless, it might be possible, say regarding the introduction of legislation that bears on children, to engage in some form of consultation that doesn't elide the fact that children are not adults.

There was an example of this, last year, I think, when ASBOs were introduced in NI. Many people pointed out that the introduction of ASBOs without the consultation of children (as required, they claim, by Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act) was illegal. The Human Rights Commission, for example, mentions it here (word doc).

I don't recall anyone actually talking about how one might go about consulting children, but I'm sure people are working on methods.

[dearieme]

I suggest that the Age of Majority for women should be 21 and for men 25.