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5 Geo. J. on Fighting Poverty 313 (1997-1998)
From Property to Personhood: A Child-Centered Perspective on Parents' Rights

handle is hein.journals/geojpovlp5 and id is 319 raw text is: FROM PROPERTY TO PERSONHOOD: A CHILD-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE ON PARENTS' RIGHTS Barbara Bennett Woodhouse* atification of the United Nations Conven- tion on the Rights of the Child (Conven- tion) has been consistently opposed in the United States, with much of this opposition com- ing from defenders of the traditional family. These opponents believe that the Convention's attempt to articulate a scheme of rights for chil- dren undermines the rights of parents. I believe that this concern is unjustified and that it reflects the continuing influence of a property theory of parenthood that was discredited long ago. Such a theory conceptualizes parental rights as being virtually absolute and an end in themselves, rather than as an outgrowth of parents' responsibilities and a means to secure the well-being of their children. This property theory has been an impediment to the acceptance of children's rights in general, and to the ratification of the Conven- tion in particular. Much of the domestic opposition to the Conven- tion comes from those who believe that by attempt- ing to articulating a scheme of rights for children, the Convention undermines the fundamental *Barbara Bennett Woodhouse is a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. The following is an edited transcript of an address Ms. Woodhouse gave on February 28, 1998 during the Symposium on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, an event hosted by the Georgetown Journal on Fighting Poverty and held at the Georgetown University Law Center rights held by parents in the traditional family. This hostility to children's rights reflects the con- tinuing influence of the long discredited tradition of treating children as property. The tenacious power of this property theory is not surprising. The concept of human property, of which slavery was the most notorious vestige, has ancient roots. The notion of children as their fathers' property flowed naturally from the story of procreation as told by a patrilineal society; accord- ing to the ancients, it was the father's seed which, once planted in the mother's womb, grew into his likeness within the woman's body. Flesh of their father's flesh, children rightly belonged to the patriarch, to be worked, traded, and given in marriage in exchange for money. Had you tried to engage Aristotle in debate over the question of parental powers versus justice for children, the debate might have ended almost before it began. He contended in the Nicomachean Ethics that: There cannot be injustice towards that which is one's own; and a chattel, or a child, until it is of a certain age and has attained independence, is as it were a part of oneself; and nobody chooses to injure himself (hence there can be no injustice towards oneself) and so neither can there be any conduct towards them that is politically just or unjust.' 1ARISTOTLE, NICOMACHEAN ETHics BOOK V 188 (J.A.K. Thom- son trans., 1986). VOLUME V, NUMBER 2 (SUMMER 1998)

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