We all believe in children’s right don’t we? We are all in favor of giving children the protection they need and deserve, aren’t we?
This is the first in a series of surely controversial articles concerning what you may regard as children’s rights. Keep reading because you may change your mind.
One of the most spectacular books ever written on the subject is “What’s Wrong with Children’s Rights” by Martin Guggenheim (Professor of Clinical Law at New York University). I tend to agree with most of his ideas and suggestions. In his book we can read in detail about how this “approach” was born and developed .In this article we will deal only with the Israeli aspect of so called “children’s rights”.
The Israeli Way:
The key word in any court decision concerning children is: The children’s best interests!
Israeli Judges know better than any other as you may have already learned, therefore they developed a very “modern approach” concerning children’s rights. From the bottom of my heart I hope you all never have to deal with this issue in court.
Travesty of Law:
As an example: Mr. and Mrs. Smith brought their five kids (ages 6, 8, 10, 12, and 15) to the court after the regular “working hours” as demanded by the Honorable Judge of the Jerusalem Family Court. She talked to them separately for a total of three hours while the parents waited outside. In her final decision she wrote: “The children’s voice was not heard”. I don’t really understand the meaning of “children’s voice” but I asked myself, “what were they doing in her chambers if not “chatting or voicing their opinion,” for three hours?”
Fortunately the appeal changed this and three other judges thought the children had voiced their opinion very well. The question is: Did they have the right to voice their opinion and wishes? Did they have the right to decide how or where their parents would live in the next few years as was this true case?
The parents of Rachel and Ruth were accused of extreme negligence. As a matter of fact they were not a very clean or organized family. The children always showed up in school very shabbily, sometimes even unclean. They constantly forgot meals at home, homework was a problem and more than once they had bruises.
It took almost two years, every penny of the parent’s savings and a very long and painful process to convince a battery of lawyers, socials workers, Judges (including an appeal) and even some reporters who got involved in the case that the parents were good parents and no harm was ever done to the children.
The social workers had done their homework well, including visitations to the house “checking the children’s beds”, opening the fridge to see what they had to eat, giving grades on how clean or unclean the house was, how well or how bad the children were doing in school and finally how the social workers from their point of view thought a good mother should or should not act at home.
This is all about adults perceptions and not children’s best interests. For many of us a good mother is not an Honorable Judge who leaves the house at 7 am giving the children the key for the house, a few sandwiches and a free hand on the TV only to come home in the afternoon closing herself in her office until late at night because she is too busy building her career.
What if these children, as it was in the real case, were a little “slow” in their studies? What if it was a fact that they forgot their lunch, even when their parents made and handed it to them every morning? The kids were never hungry as they told the Judge because there were always a few kids forgetting their food and others never wanting to eat what they brought. (Let me tell you a personal secret: I forget to take my lunch to work on a regular basis!)
These kids were very happy, always jumping around and somehow always falling, and as a result lightly hurt. Is this a crime? The parents were both artists, working as teachers and their “cleanness meter” was not the main concern for them but rather a happy and healthy family.
Who’s Rights are we really dealing with?
Law makers, Judges, Lawyers, Social Workers and every person involved in children’s rights is an ADULT. Have you ever heard of teenagers voicing their opinion on the bench?
It is impossible to separate children’s rights or children’s best interests from the adult’s interests, beliefs, wishes and values. In reality, we are talking about children’s rights through adults’ eyes, adults’ values and mainly from the adults’ own interests.
When parents fight for custody and the Judge wants the children to have their “own voice”, a third party representative is appointed by the court. A lawyer representing the child (children), but who rarely speaks to the child, is voicing his own opinion and his personal beliefs but not the child’s. The position the lawyer takes in the end for this or that side is his position and not the child’s position.
In a democratic society it is important to advocate for children’s rights and seek their best interest. These rights should certainly be part of the discourse about how we want to build our society but do not be mistaken by “allowing the concern for children’s right to become so overwhelming that we lose the sight of other, important values our society holds dear” as professor Guggenheim wrote so well in his book.
My personal touch:
Children are not supposed to raise themselves, feed themselves, and decide what medication they will take or vote for the parliament. This is naturally a parent’s decision as many other decisions we make for them every day.
The vast majority of cases involving children are De Facto about a dispute between the parents and not about the child.
Diminishing our parental authority will make it more difficult to educate our children. As the authorities and especially the judiciary signal to the children themselves that they “have a lot of power”, they will object to our most important task as adults: Prepare our children to be positive adults, contribute to society and especially ready to live on their own an independent life.
It is time to shift the balance and return to the natural guardians; the parental authority. We are a strong people and a strong society not having to be afraid of admitting mistakes. We have the legal tools to safeguard children’s rights and well-being without damaging the delicate balance that exists between the rights of the child to grow with dignity and security, and the right of parents to raise their children according to their beliefs as long as the child’s basic rights are not violated.
