Children raised by mother and father – the only ‘right to family life’ that counts
by Will Jones, The Conservative Woman:
A lot of people these days, apparently including many judges, appear to be under the misunderstanding that human rights are some kind of wish list of liberal ideas to be imposed autocratically on society.
The right to family life, for example, has been progressively reinterpreted to include the right to ‘alternative’ family arrangements, same-sex marriage and even abortion. But this is a very long way from the origin of the right in John Locke’s ‘law of nature’ – quite its antithesis, in fact.
For Locke, the family was founded on the natural right of children to be raised by their natural parents. He reasoned as follows. A child is brought into existence by its parents without its consent and relies for its survival and healthy development into adulthood on the care of both its parents. Thus given the fundamental law of nature, which is the preservation of humankind, children have a natural right to the care and protection of those responsible for their existence, and parents have a corresponding duty to supply those needs. It is from this basic law of reason and nature that the institution of marriage arises, as the union of the child’s parents in a form fitted for its nurture, and with it the importance of promoting marriage and those things which tend to preserve it.
In Locke’s own words:
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
