แปลบทสนทนา
Challenge of Child Advocacy
Advocating for children is a challenge for many reasons. Children
are powerless in ways that even other groups we describe as
powerless are not. African-Americans, women, the elderly, and
persons with disabilities can all vote, use their purchasing power to
wield influence, and get out onto the streets to demonstrate. Children
by definition cannot vote, and even those old enough to shop and to
demonstrate are subject to their parents' decision-making power and
to special state restrictions. Infants cannot even speak to express their
needs and desires, and young children do not have the knowledge
base or the developed reasoning powers to make rational decisions
for themselves. Children depend on adults both to figure out what
children's interests are and to protect those interests.
The challenge of child advocacy is to ensure that children's
interests are served when, in the end, adults make the decisions. One
favorite legal solution has been to rely on each child's birth parents to
make decisions for that child, based in part on the idea that parents
will be "naturally" motivated to promote their own children's best
interests. Another favorite legal solution has been to rely on the state
to act as parens patriae, based in part on the idea that parents cannot
be entirely trusted, and therefore the state should ensure that at least
certain basic interests of the country's children are served. In the
United States, as in other countries, we rely on both solutions in
combination.1 We give parents powerful rights to raise their children
without undue interference by others, including the state. At the same
time, we give the state some right to intervene in the family to protect
children against abuse and neglect by their parents, and to insist on
certain basics in terms of education, health, and protection against
such exploitation as child labor.
1. See DOUGLAS E. ABRAMS & SARAH H. RAMSEY, CHILDREN AND THE LAW: DOCTRINE, POLICY
AND PRACTICE 14-16, 19-25 (3d ed. 2007).
[Vol. 24:333
HeinOnline -- 24 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 336 2007-2008
336 GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 24:333
I. INTRODUCTION
A. T