At the conclusion of my last essay on “Education and the Rights of Children and Parents,” I argued that the relationship between parents and their children was grounded in two fundamental facts of the human condition. The first concerns the moral choices involved between a man and a woman in creating and then bringing a new human life into the world. The second concerns the natural maturation of children from birth until they reach the age of majority. Both of these facts serve as the metaphysical foundation on which we will establish the rights of parents and children.
With these observation-based facts as our starting point, let us now begin to examine how our general understanding of what rights are (see “The Role of Rights in a Free Society”) applies to a specific kind of human relationship—the relationship between parents and their children.
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