RSS
Home
Girl Sues Dad over Grounding -- and Wins
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
A Canadian court ruled last week that the father of a 12-year-old girl had no right to ground his daughter for disobeying orders to stay off the Internet.
The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.
I have a hunch that most people (and parents, especially) would disagree with the court's ruling in this case, given how ingrained in legal precedent is the idea that adults are responsible for the welfare of their children (parents have actually been arrested for leaving sleeping children alone in a car within sight for mere minutes). And at minimum, it's generally understood by most folks that if two people bring a child into the world, it's their responsibility to care for it. Just as there are different political philosophies, there is any number of child-rearing philosophies available to parents. Some work, some don't; but one would be hard-pressed to allege reasonably that parents should not have the right to instill within their own children values of their choosing so long as they cause no harm in the process.
To say that I support a father's right to ground his daughter for disobeying an order is redundant given my aforementioned thoughts, but I think it behooves us to examine why the Canadian court got its decision wrong.
It should go without saying that not all laws or legal rulings are moral or just (after all, even slavery was legal). Indeed, as a libertarian I believe in the natural rights of man (a universal right to life and liberty, for example) and contend that all laws should be based upon the non-aggression principle -- the idea that only the initiation of force (or threat of force) or fraud against a person or his property is immoral, and subsequently illegitimate (illegal). Certainly there is criticism of this principle in general and even disagreement in meaning among libertarians.
However, when I consider the idea of the initiation of force, I understand this to mean the initiation of violence (and when referring to force against a person, I understand this primarily to mean physical harm), whether it come in the form of a government's collection of taxes or paternalistic mandates like helmet laws, or the individual act of rape or murder. Virtually all state edicts are violent, as they are all ultimately enforced at the point of a gun (just refuse to pay your taxes and see what happens). Likewise individual acts of violence against another, though whether or not one actually brandishes a weapon in the commission of a crime is irrelevant; any act that forcibly violates the right of one individual to go about his affairs peaceably, unmolested, and in outright possession of his property should be construed a crime.
Therefore, when we consider the father who grounds his child -- in our current example, seemingly to prevent her from using a technological device enabling her to advertise "inappropriate" pictures -- we must approach it from the standpoint of whether or not he was initiating force (violence) against his daughter.
To be sure, any order passed from parent to child implies the use of force or coercion -- "Eat your peas, or you will get no dessert!" was a common refrain as I was growing up -- but absent any presence of physical harm, one can hardly argue credibly that a crime has been committed. For starters, parents are responsible for caring for their children; the government is not. To operate from the pretense that a parent/child relationship is no different than one between two strangers is disingenuous and a bit absurd. Abuse and assault are different than acts of "tough love" that might offend the delicate emotional sensibilities of an obstinate child.
Furthermore, the only appropriate function of government ostensibly is to protect property rights, and in this case the daughter has no "right" to use property (the computer) that is owned by her father. Even assuming the daughter is the legitimate owner of the computer (perhaps it was a gift), the father was not relieving his daughter of her possession of the computer by stealing it; he was merely attempting to regulate its use.
Speaking of regulation, it's interesting, isn't it, that the state seeks to regulate our lives at nearly every turn, though in this case a Canadian court has taken issue with a parent's obligation to regulate the actions of his child. After all, were he to let his daughter run free with wild abandon and in the process harm herself, it's not altogether unreasonable to assume that the government would similarly assert its authority by accusing him of neglect (or some such).
By usurping one father's authority to discipline his child out of concern for her well-being, this Canadian court in all likelihood may have just set a precedent that henceforth will be used to argue the state's legal claim over its citizens' children.
