When we “protect” children, we prevent them from having access to information and experiences. We
may justify doing so in order to promote a particular notion of the good life (”have long term relationships,
fall in love, have a family, been more successful, have better mental health” in your words).
We lie to them and lock them up for their own good. But really, it’s for our own good – our conception of
the good. All your examples are euphemisms for pursuing a particular kind of life that may, in fact, be very
immoral by some standards. Mutual sexuality output contracts, reproduction, achieving high social status,
and behaving in a predictable manner do not seem to me to be goals so universally honorable that they
justify denying 13-18-year-olds control of their own bodies."
On a more general level we can look at the undoubted fact that in this
society children are the property of their parents; they are placed in the
hierarchical family structure which demands that they be non-sexual and
denies them the liberty to choose with whom they want to associate.
However much a child may suffer persecution from peers and be unloved
by parents, because of this property relationship, a friendship with an adult
is frowned upon. Together with the wrath which results from their breaching
of property rights,
I have known several people who have
pleaded guilty when they might have escaped conviction, simply to save
the child from the anguish of it all. One of them got a life sentence for his
pains! Can it really be satisfactory to rely on a system which exploits the
courage, the moral strength, the sheer goodness of the accused, in order to
condemn him?
The disparity in size and power between parent and child creates a
potential for abuse: a mother could not batter a baby as big as herself. But,
on the basis that parent-child relationships are generally positive (and, in
addition, given that safeguards can be built in, such as according rights to
children) we accept that inequality is simply in the nature of the thing. In
itself, it is not an aspect on which we would focus our attention in
determining whether a particular mother-child relationship was good or bad.
"Let’s face it: the modern crusade to “protect” children is really about protecting traditional parental
authority and control."
They conflate rape with sex. They can do the same with adult males and females.
At the moment children are trained not to refuse adults anything and to
accept all forms of physical affection as being the right of an adult to
impose on a child. We keep children innocent and ignorant and then somewhat hypocritically
