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Abstract
This article addresses the subject of children's citizenship in liberal democracies. While children may lack full capability to act in the capacity of citizens, the political status to which they have been relegated leaves much to be desired. Paternalist policies dictate that children be represented politically by their parents, leaving them as or more vulnerable and excluded from private life as women were under coverture. Lacking independent representation or a voice in politics, children and their interests often fail to be understood because the adults who do represent them conflate, or substitute, their own views for those of children. Compounding this damage is the tendency for democratic societies to view children not as an ever-present segment of the populace, but rather as future adults. This encourages disregard for children's interests. Until democratic societies establish a better-defined and comprehensive citizenship for children, along with methods for representation that are sensitive to the special political circumstances faced by children, young people will remain ill-governed and neglected by democratic politics.
Notes
*
The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Rogers M. Smith, Ian Shapiro, Robert A. Dahl, and Fred Greenstein.
1 Burke, E. (Citation1955, p. 140).
2 Two excellent overviews of contemporary citizenship theory include Kymlicka, W. and Norman, W. (Citation1994) and Turner, B. S. (Citation1997).
3 For a more thorough discussion of the meaning and import of semi-citizenship, see Cohen, (Citation2003).
4 One study that defies this simplistic understanding of membership is Isin, Citation2002.
5 See, e.g. Levy, Citation1997; Will Kymlicka, Citation1995.
6 This definition is based on T.H. Marshall's classic lecture (Marshall, Citation1965). Since his Marshall lectures on the subject of citizenship, a veritable cottage industry has emerged in which the rights/nationality formulation has been added to, attacked, and affirmed. While these debates have in some cases been fruitful, I wish to sideline them in the current context, in the service of focusing on circumstances peculiar to children. I am aware that there are those who will take issue with the formulation that I have chosen, however I hope that in its generality it can win more supporters than detractors.
7 Resident aliens, convicted felons and sexual minorities all hold forms of semi-citizenship, however of these groups, only children have extensive and unique claims on society in addition to restricted rights. For two excellent analyses of the philosophical issues surrounding non-reciprocal duties, see MacCormick, Citation1982; and O'Neill, Citation1988.
8 Dahl excludes children when formulating his modified categorical imperative, in which “Every adult subject to a government and its laws must be presumed to be qualified as, and has an unqualified right to be, a member of the demos.” See Dahl, Citation1989, p. 127). Dahl notes the difficulties inherent in differentiating between children and adults, but does not go further in his analysis of what might constitute just circumstances for the governance of children.
9 For a pithy discussion of the conflation of children's social citizenship with children's citizenship more generally, see Landsdown, Citation2001.
10 Ayelet Shachar underscores this point by quoting Canadian immigration law which is “designed and administered in such a manner as to promote the domestic and international interests of Canada.” (Shachar, Citation2003, p. 351).
11 See e.g. Parham v J.R. (442 U.S. 584, 602 1979) in which the Supreme Court concluded that children were not entitled to due process in cases where parents were attempting to commit their children to state mental facilities.
12 The exception to this statement would be issues of racial and gender equality in education, which have received ample attention, if not remedy, from policy-makers and academics alike.
13 In the U.S. see Johnson v. City of Opelousas. European countries including the U.K and France have a range of youth curfew laws in place.
14 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 271 (1988).
15 See, e.g. Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622 (1979) in regard to laws requiring parental consent for a minor's abortion. See more generally Gaylin and Macklin (eds), Citation1982.
16 This legal structure makes coverture look positively generous in that coverture is a specific arrangement referring to the rights of married women, not all women, and coverture recognized the potential legal personhood of women, even if that recognition extended only as far as the husband who absorbed this legal personhood upon marriage.
17 In fact, Shapiro's categorization of education as a basic interest seems open to debate, as education can easily be construed as directly relevant to both best and basic interests.
18 Hartog identifies 1864 as the point at which the legal (as opposed to social or political) institution of coverture begins to be dismantled. In a reversal of a previous ruling, Judge Thomas Johnson, writing for the New York State Court of Appeals, stated that the understanding of the wife as property of her husband was in fact outmoded. Wives were “ in law an individual.” (Hartog, Citation2000, p. 98).
19 Married women could own property and conclude certain relevant contracts. (Hartog, Citation2000, Pg. 118).
20 It has been suggested that parents receive extra weight as a result of the burden of representing their children's interests. See Bennett, Citation2000. However this would not address the many conflicts of interest that exist when one private individual is required to represent the interests of other individuals.
21 Re court proceedings, see Parham v. J.R. in which the Supreme Court denied a child's right to due process in cases where parents sought commitment of their child to a state mental institution.
22 Data from the 2000 U.S. Census indicates that children under the age of 18 compose roughly 25% of the population. Adjusting for lower ages of majority, the U.N. reports similar to just slightly lower percentages for European states.
23 For example, the recent discovery that most wooden playground equipment is made with a chemically treated pine containing arsenic.
24 The National School Lunch Act was originally designed in part to “provide a commodity market.” It continues to serve in this role, providing an outlet for surplus crops produced by American farmers. (See the USDA's history of federal food distribution programs at http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/aboutfdp/fdd_history.pdf.) Also see Sims (Citation1998, pp. 67–92).
25 One study showed that school lunches exceeded the recommended daily allowance for fat by 25 percent, for saturated fat by 50 percent, and for sodium by 100 percent (Kapner, Citation1995).
26 “More recently, in an attempt to lure children back to the dinner hall, schools have turned their canteens into Fuel Zones sponsored by the manufacturers of junk food and fizzy drinks. Children help themselves to high fat, sugary meals at burger bars, a practice which Glasgow City council is belatedly abandoning. Malnutrition among a minority of Scottish children is a real problem but, thankfully, a diminishing one. Of growing concern is child obesity. In Scotland 13% of girls aged 4 to 11 are overweight. Sheridan's proposal to spend tens of millions of pounds on food for children who are already adequately fed or over-fed seems profligate.” (Bowditch, 2002, p. 17)..
27 As of March 2002, the Insurance Institute for Highway safety reports that in the U.S. alone, 129 children have been killed by airbags since 1990. (http://www.hwysafety.org/safety_facts/airbags/stats.htm).
28 A minority of those killed by airbags were adults whose height and weight were significantly under national averages.
29 Debates about how childhood has been, and ought to be, understood are ongoing. See Aries, Citation1962 and more recently Kertzger and Barbagli, Citation2004.
30 Female infanticide is a problem not just in the commonly cited case of China, but in many countries where gender inequalities render girls inferior to boys. Female children are also frequently sold to adoption agencies and into sexual slavery at young ages to both for the pecuniary rewards and to relieve their parents of the financial burden of raising them.
31 This has occurred in the U.S. Guantanamo detention cases resulting from the recent conflict in Iraq. One interesting study that investigates this subject more generally is Kinsella, Citation2004.
32 In Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), the Supreme Court reversed a ruling that would have required Amish parents to send their children to public schools through the 8th grade. The Amish parents involved in the suit kept their children out of school in the belief that education beyond a certain point is inconsistent with the values and practices of the Amish community that they wished their children to perpetuate.
33 Although it is too early to tell, one wonders if recent clashes over religious expression in French public schools will yield a corresponding move toward parochial, private and even home-based education among ethnic minorities residing in France.
34 Wisconsin v. Yoder at 222.
35 In this case there is some evidence that at least one of the children involved shared her parents' desire, although given the circumstances, it is difficult to see how any of the children could have freely formed and expressed contrary opinions. Nonetheless, the wording of the decision does not seem to rest on the desires of the children (in which case a more thorough and independent assessment of those desires would have been in order), but rather on the competing desires of the parents and the state.
36 Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925).
37 The adult rights to bear children and raise them in extreme belief systems coalesced tragically recently in the case of David and Rebecca Corneau, whose cult beliefs have been implicated in the mysterious deaths of two of their infant children. While they have served brief jail sentences for contempt of court they are now free and able to bring more children into their questionable way of life. See Kurtz, Citation2002) p. B1.
38 Evidence that the simple social right to education does not guarantee children preparation for liberal citizenship.
39 Bruce Ackerman writes to this point (Ackerman,Citation1980, Chapter 5). He also acknowledges that the need for “cultural coherence” imposes some limits on the breadth of opportunities that can be made available to children at a young age.
40 I say well-established because a consistent and lengthy track record must be established by any organization in order to claim representativeness. Social movements are capable of generating organizations that claim to represent children, but many lack the permanence that true citizenship demands.
41 Again, the recent flouting of human rights norms by the U.S. government during the conflict in Iraq brings into relief the weaknesses of agencies charged with fulfilling these norms under adverse circumstances.
42 An excellent general discussion of the history and roles of ombudsmen can be found in the International Ombudsman Institute Booklet which has been reproduced at http://www.law.ualberta.ca/centres/ioi/brochure.htm.
43 The Charter of the Fundamental Rights of Citizens of the European Union states: “Any citizen of the Union and any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a Member State has the right to refer to the Ombudsman of the Union cases of maladministration in the activities of the Community institutions or bodies, with the exception of the Court of Justice and the ourt of First Instance acting in their judicial role.”.