When it comes to religion, children are the unwitting victims of a geographical lottery. Where you were born closely links to what religion your parents follow. This in turn is the best predictor of what you wind up with, often for life. The name given to this phenomenon is hereditary religion, which is defined as the propagation of a religion down through the generations based on the indoctrination of credulous young children before they can resist. If religion was all they got, perhaps this would not be objectionable. Unfortunately, they also get class enmities, religious doctrinal disagreements, nationalistic disputes, tribal jealousies, and other fractious hatreds that make hereditary religion a curse on humanity.
In ancient patriarchal societies husbands had absolute control over their wives and children, who were considered property. In Roman law male children inherited the family wealth and they were carefully groomed for their responsibilities. So important were male children under Roman law that a powerful patriarch could practically murder a rebellious male child with impunity (I know I will hear from at least a few frustrated parents of teenagers on this point). We have to imagine male children in those ancient households sat up straight in their high chairs, did not sass back and intently focused on every bit of vital information they were taught about Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, and all the rest. One source lists 19 Roman deities, in all. Whew, at least our modern monotheistic religions improve the efficiency of teaching a child religion. Perhaps parents had something to do with this.
According to some historians, our present attraction to the doctrine of parent's rights traces back to patriarchal customs, such as described for the Romans. Whether or not that theory is true, few would deny that the forces behind hereditary religion operate openly and freely all over the world today. Woe is to the incautious person who challenges parental rights. They will quickly learn they have stepped into a minefield and that parents regard their right to indoctrinate their children with their religion as sacrosanct. Many parents will offer free psychiatric advice to their overly bold challenger and even suggest appropriate medications. All in an effort to be helpful, I am sure.
Because of a Supreme Court-recognized right to control children's religion, "[p]arents may believe as a matter of religious freedom [that] they have a right to raise their children in their own faith, even when their 'faith' conflicts with widely accepted and defensible secular beliefs." Laura M. Purdy, In Their Best Interest?. 171 (1992). Such conflicts usually involve issues around sex education, alternative families, or gender sensitivity training.
Unfortunately, the religious justifications that undergird the rights of parents have become insinuated in the case law of the United States. How in our secular country the Supreme Court could decide that parent's religious exercise rights trumped children's rights (Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 164 (1944) may not be so difficult to fathom. After all, the United States, by all measures has the most religious inhabitants in the world. That is why we will find it difficult politically to moderate the rights of parents (and may have to go around them). If we nullify their present overly broad religious rights, who knows where that could lead? Totalitarian atheist monster, I hear people shouting. Read Ron Paul's web pages, smarty pants! Check out Ayn Rand. Listen to Rush! Jesus loves you.
Parents indeed have the law, or customs, or possibly both on their side, but do they have a moral case? Laws and morals are often out of sync. What seems to be in effect now is a reciprocity
agreement. I'll indoctrinate my children in whatever I want and you can indoctrinate your kids in whatever you want. But there is a problem with this understanding.
Let's take an imaginary voyage around the world. First stop is Northern Ireland. Here we have Catholics versus Protestants and luckless children neatly sorted into opposing religious camps depending upon where the happy go lucky stork deposited them. Usually in Northern Ireland the dividing line is simply a street or avenue. At our next stop, Palestine, Israelis and Palestinians can be separated by a few tens of meters and a tall concrete wall. Do you imagine all these Irish, Palestinian and Israeli parents are infatuated with the religious rights of their children? Or, would the rights of parents be a better guess? If you insist that you have the right to indoctrinate your child in your chosen religion then under the reciprocity test you must concede that the most rabid Islamist, Palestinian, Irish Catholic or Protestant parent likewise should enjoy this right. It is easy to assess the results of hereditary religion based on this premise.
Northern Ireland and Palestine are chosen as representative examples to save having to spend long minutes typing out all the names of world trouble spots. As our college teachers used to say, I leave it as an exercise for you to identify all the other regions where hereditary religion is intimately woven into the heartbreaking and needless strife we now witness. As soon as any kind of strife breaks out, it is a foregone conclusion that the warriors on either side will seek approval from their clerics. Unfortunately, clerics are all too willing to comply with ever so handy religious texts and dogma to support their supplicants.
In all such cases around the world, parents are employing ancient cultural schemes that are intricately interwoven with and reinforced by religion. The universal motivation for these schemes is the perpetuation of a culture, religion, tribe or maybe all three. Furthermore, there is no reason why this assertion does not apply to our own country, as well. Other examples of how religion is involved go back to two famous US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) cases.
The Amish won what turned out to be a pivotal parent's rights case, Wisconsin vs. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972). Another earlier SCOTUS case was PIERCE v. SOCIETY OF THE SISTERS OF THE HOLY NAMES OF JESUS, 268 U.S. 510 (1925) which was tangentially involved with religion but was argued on the basis of the business of running a sectarian school. Child rights suffered collateral damage in the Pierce case. In Yoder, when arguing a first amendment right to the free exercise of their religion the Amish pointed to their bible and explained that this sacred text demanded that they teach their children the Anabaptist faith and unless the children were brought out of the public school system after the 8th grade this would be difficult or impossible to achieve. Thus, their religion would wither and die, and in our god drenched country that argument won the day for the Amish.
But how is it right to sacrifice innocent children to accomplish the goals, sacred or not, of adults? If it was a right to decide a child's spouse do we seriously imagine the Amish would have marched into court with a biblical argument in tow? If not, can you supply any other valid argument that would have been entertained instead of the trump card of religious freedom?
The Yoder decision effectively makes Amish children into simple instruments of their parent's agenda to insure Anabaptism survives. The seminal question is why should generations of Amish children be sentenced to an inferior education to achieve this goal? Why should they be reduced to menial manual labor and have their intellects stunted so a zealous backward looking religion can propagate down through the generations? Recall that Anabaptism is a religious sect that the Swiss violently put down at gunpoint when it first arose in Switzerland.
No Amish toddler looks up at their parents and pleads, "Yes please, sentence me to your delusion. For life."
If we can see that hereditary religion is a destructive force and not an easy matter to justify morally, what are we to do about this? Why not try to find solutions that if followed would result in the best outcomes for the largest number of children and parents, regardless of how they are situated, their intelligence, and their ability to be parents? Why shouldn't that be the way we define our goal? Shouldn't we always seek answers that benefit the most individuals? Perhaps in a few generations children will grow into adults with critical thinking skills and religions will be forced to reform. Dogma and superstition can not survive free inquiry.
What we now have is a situation where attorneys and judges interminably wrangle over what parent's rights should encompass and where the lines should be drawn between the state and parents. A seminal paper by law professor James G. Dwyer makes the case that we should just jettison the doctrine of parent's rights and start considering parenting a privilege that can be restricted or revoked if parents abuse or trample their privilege. As a principle shouldn't we open our minds and listen to Professor Dwyer?
Were such a change adopted, we would be moving from a parent-centered legal doctrine to a child-centered doctrine where children are not left outside the judges chambers to cuddle their teddies while the state makes sweeping decisions affecting them that they have absolutely no voice in. You do not need a law degree to understand Professor
Dwyer's seminal paper:
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/dwyer2/