Nobody should own another human being, yet parent have basic decision rights and responsibilities for their children. That view has long been challenged by philosophers and politicians of authoritarian bent.
- Circa 1000 BCE. Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus’s policy: “children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth, and, therefore, would not have his citizens begot by the first-comers, but by the best men that could be found” (Plutarch).
- Circa 400 BCE. Plato: “the procreation of children and all that sort of thing should be made as far as possible the proverbial goods of friends that are common.” (Republic 424a). Then, “the children shall be common, and that no parent shall know its own offspring nor any child its parent” (Rep. 457d). Individuality will be eliminated as much as possible so that all think, feel, and act as a common organism: “the best governed state most nearly resembles such an organism” (Rep. 462a-e).
- Circa 1750 CE: Rousseau criticizes the practice of making parents responsible for their children — “the state, by making children burdensome to their parents, kills them indiscriminately before their birth” (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) — and praises the Spartan model. Rousseau’s disciple, the revolutionary Saint-Just, proposed: “Children belong to the mother until age five, and to the Republic after that” and claimed that moral parents will “give their children to the fatherland without regret.”
- And many others.
Now read Professor C. Bradley Thompson’s essay on our current battles over parental rights and state control of children: “The Fundamental Issue of Our Time.”
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