How should we think about childhood and children?

A provocation paper

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David Archard, Emeritus Professor, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast

Introduction

Philosophy has interesting things to say about children and about how we should think about childhood. Yet it has on the whole done so by viewing childhood in comparison with adulthood. More particularly, what philosophers think — and have historically thought — is distinctive about human beings, what marks them out as valuable and different from non-humans, is something that children lack or at least fail to display sufficiently.

For example, philosophers may believe that humans have logos, the capacity to speak or to exercise reason. But very young children cannot speak, and even older children are often characterised as irrational or as at least lacking the same degree of reason as adults. Human beings have the ability to make autonomous choices about the kind of life they want to lead. That is why, on a familiar account, they should be accorded the freedom to lead the life they autonomously choose. Yet children are argued not to have the independence of mind and ability to act on their own choices. John Stuart Mill, for example, notes that it is “hardly necessary to say that” his famous doctrine of individual liberty applies “only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are not speaking of children”.

On this kind of picture children are defined by what they are not — adults — even if they will eventually and normally develop into adults. Childhood is a ‘predicament’ from which individuals must escape into maturity. Children are on the road to being adults and we should prepare them for becoming adults; we should facilitate, encourage and support that transition. Yet, whilst they are still children they must be seen and treated in very different ways from those in which we adults regard and act towards one another.

Rights

This outlook is most in evidence in the debate on children’s rights. Philosophers disagree as to whether, morally, children ought to have rights. Onora O’Neill doubts that they do have rights because she thinks that what is owed to children — how we as adults ought to treat them — is satisfactorily and appropriately captured by speaking of our duties to them, not by giving them rights. [i] Other critics of children’s rights have argued that giving children rights and allowing them to exercise those rights prevents them from developing into adults who will have the capacities needed to possess rights. Laura Purdy is a good example of such a critic.[ii]

Other philosophical views on children’s rights allow that children do have rights, but add that they do not have the same range of rights as adults.[iii] In particular those philosophers who might be prepared to give children some rights restrict these to those that protect their fundamental welfare interests but exclude children from possession of rights that allow them to exercise fundamental choices.

Philosophers may disagree as to whether children have moral rights. They should not ignore the fact that they have rights in law. In fact the most important legal statement of children’s rights is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that the United Kingdom has ratified. The Convention accords children a very wide range of rights.[iv] It is also a hugely influential international statement of what legal and political status children should enjoy in every state that has ratified it. It has led to a large number of important affirmations of how the rights listed in the Convention should be understood and what their implementation requires of states. These in turn must explain, and defend, what they have done or failed to do to honour the terms of the Convention.

Significantly the Convention accords to children everywhere rights that are not accorded to adults, yet at the same time does not give to children many familiar rights that adults enjoy. It does so precisely because it recognises that children do differ from adults, and in its Preamble declares, quoting the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, that “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection”. These ‘special’ safeguards are those that are appropriate to the nature of childhood. This does not render the possession of rights by children inappropriate; rather it guarantees them certain kinds of right.

If the UNCRC is an inescapable starting point it is important for philosophers to comment on and critically evaluate those rights that children are given by the Convention. Two articles of the Convention are central. The first is Article 3 that states that the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration when any official agency is dealing with children. This is a very familiar principle within child care provisions and paediatric medical decision-making. It has enormous policy implications. Yet it is not evidently clear what exactly best interests means in different contexts, or what it means to think of such interests as a primary consideration (the Children Act of 1989 speaks, by contrast, of the welfare of the child as ‘paramount’), or whether the best interests principle always applies.

For instance, in recent debates following the tragic Charlie Gard case[v] it has been suggested that when doctors and parents disagree as to what should be done medically for a sick child parents should be permitted to determine the treatment so long as such a choice does not expose the child to significant harm.[vi] By contrast the existing legal standard is that medical treatment should promote the child’s best interests. It matters greatly then that we can understand what this might mean and that there are no insuperable problems in using such a standard.

Giving the child a voice

The Gard case, like that of Alfie Evans also recently in the news, is an example of a very young infant who is dying and who is also too young to inform anyone of their views. Article 12 of the UNCRC is thus critical. It gives the child “who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child”. This is as influential and important an Article as Article 3. However, for all its apparent simple rhetorical clarity, it is a difficult right to understand. How, for instance, should we understand, and determine, a capacity to form and express views? Should we clearly distinguish between a right to make one’s views known and a right to have those views listened to and taken account of? And, perhaps most importantly, how exactly should we ‘weight’ a child’s views?

These questions broach the matter of why and how the expressed views of children count. Do they have merely ‘consultative’ value allowing us as adults to be clearer about what matters to any child,[vii] or, as I believe is true, do they have some kind of determinative value pushing us as adults to at least take account of what the child wants to happen?[viii]

Philosophy can help us to answer these questions. It can do so by making clear what exactly is meant by having the different rights to make one’s views known, to have those views listened to, and to have those views make a difference to what happens. They need clear answers if we are to do what the second paragraph of Article 12 requires of states, namely, to provide the child with “the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body”.

Voice and maturity

Finally, in respect of the UNCRC we need to be clear how Articles 3 and 12 stand in relation to one another. The first tells us to do what is best for the child, the second to take weighted account of what the child would wish to happen which may not be what is best. Clearly the two requirements can be in conflict. Nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated than in the case of medical decision-making. Doctors and parents may agree what is best for a child in medical care. The child may nevertheless express a preference for treatment other than that on which the relevant adults agree; or for no treatment. How should we resolve such a disagreement? Article 12 gives one kind of answer, namely, giving a weight to the child’s view. Yet it is hard to understand what it might mean in practical terms to weight a child’s view when it conflicts with a judgment of what is best. The famous English legal judgment of Gillick [ix] gives another answer, namely, to allow that a child may be mature enough to make their own decisions even if they are not those an adult would make on their behalf. But then it has been notoriously hard to keep a judgment of a child’s sufficient maturity separate from a judgment that a mature child would make the choice indicated as the right one by adults.

A note on maturity

In all its claims about how childhood should be understood — especially as deficient by comparison with adulthood — it is important that philosophy should learn from the evidence of psychology, history, anthropology, and the social sciences. It should not characterise the immaturity of childhood as fixed and invariant across all periods and societies. Moreover, it should also be prepared to acknowledge that any incapacity can be socialised or learned, and, correlatively, can be overcome by experience of and practice in what demands the relevant competence.

Equally no age has ever been agreed in law or policy that fixes the outer limit of childhood for all matters. Philosophy should be sensitive to the differences between children and between children and adults when it comes to distributing rights and responsibilities.

The goods of childhood

In recent years philosophers writing about childhood and children have become interested in the question of whether or not there are ‘goods of childhood.’[x]These are the things — such as innocence and play — that make childhood valuable and should be guaranteed for children. Such writing arose from an interest in what social justice demands and from whether it requires that we ensure that different kinds of goods are provided to different classes of person. From a consideration of what might be owed to children — because they are children — there has been a further discussion of what it is that makes childhood especially valuable.

In turn, this has generated an interesting discussion of how the value of childhood compares with that of adulthood. This concern promises to redress the characterisation of childhood as simply what is not adulthood. What is it that makes childhood as childhood valuable? However, it has also provoked a characteristically philosophical discussion of whether it would be better always to remain a child as Peter Pan does; or whether it would be better, if it was possible, to shorten the period of childhood and increase that of adulthood.[xi]

This need not merely be fanciful speculation. For such questions go to the heart of the practical matter of what we should do for children when they are children and because they are children. Should we, for instance, educate them to take them out of their ‘predicament’ or to permit them to enjoy being children outside the world of adulthood? Should we allow children to flourish as curious innocents in their own world or should we prepare them as speedily as possible for the tasks of maturity? Is play important because through it children can be characteristically childlike or is it important inasmuch as children can rehearse and practice what they will do for real when adults? These contrasted possibilities echo a longstanding distinction in how we might and should understand childhood: as a state of ‘being’, distinct and independent of other states of life, or as a state of ‘becoming’, important principally or even only as a prelude to and preparation for adulthood.

In answering the questions in the preceding paragraph we also need to decide what steps we ought to take to hear what children themselves want and then decide how exactly and in practical terms we should take account of those views.

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[i] Onora O’Neil, ‘Children’s Rights and Children’s Lives,’ Ethics 98 (1988): 445–463

[ii] Laura Purdy, In their best interest? The case against equal rights for children (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).

[iii] David Archard and Colin Macleod, The Moral and Political Status of Children (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), Part I ‘Children and Rights’; David Archard, ‘Children’s Rights,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-children/

[iv] https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx

[v] Great Ormond Street Hospital v (1) Constance Yates (2) Chris Gard (3) Charles Gard (a Child by his Guardian Ad Litem) [2017]

[vi] See, for example, Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu, Ethics, Conflict and Medical Treatment for Children: From Disagreement to Dissensus (Edinburgh: Elsevier, 2019)

[vii] Harry Brighouse, ‘How Should Children Be Heard?’ Arizona Law Review (Fall 2003): 691–711.

[viii] David Archard and Marit Skivenes, ‘Balancing a Child’s Best Interests and a Child’s Views,’ International Journal of Children’s Rights 17 (2009) 1–21

[ix] Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Health Authority [1986] AC 112, [1986] 1 FLR 229, [1985] UKHL 7.

[x] Samantha Brennan, ‘The Goods of Childhood and Children’s Rights,’ in F. Baylis and C. McLeod (eds.) Family-Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 29–48; Anca Gheaus, ‘The ‘Intrinsic Goods of Childhood’ and the Just Society,’ in A. Bagattini and C. Macleod (eds.) The Nature of Children’s Well-Being: Theory and Practice (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015): 35–54; Colin Macleod, ‘Primary goods, capabilities and children,’ in H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns (eds.) Measuring justice: Primary goods and capabilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 174–19

[xi] Anca Gheaus, ‘Unfinished Adults and Defective Children: On the Nature and Value of Childhood,’ Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 9:1 (2015): 9–21; Patrick Tomlin, ‘Saplings or Caterpillars? Trying to Understand Children’s Wellbeing,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (2018): 29–46

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