A Child's Best Interests...

So who gets to decide? According to this recent opinion piece by UCLA Constitutional Law Professore Eugene Volokh in the L.A. Times , courts should be careful when applying this "best interest of the children" standard to limit the free speech rights of parents. Consider this:

Many parents might wonder how their own philosophies might be evaluated by family judges under that standard.

In fact, a wide range of parental speech has been prohibited by family courts, all in the name of the child's supposed best interests. One parent was enjoined from making any racial slurs in a child's presence. Another parent whose ex was a lesbian was ordered to "make sure that there is nothing in the religious upbringing or teaching that the minor child is exposed to that can be considered homophobic." A different court barred a father from taking his children to "any social, religious or educational functions sponsored by or which otherwise promote homosexual lifestyle."

The gist of the piece focuses on the 1st amendment rights of the parents involved. But I think it falls prey to the same fallacy often seen in articles discussing legal issues involving youth. The idea that young people are incapable of exercising agency over their own thoughts, ideas and actions wreaks of an anti-youth prejudice, a prejudice the law not only encourages but in fact, codifies.

In this particular article, one of the parents is a militant Islamic with pro-jihad ideas and he is forbidden from discussing these issues with his children, both of whom are named Mujahid. (Like George Forman's kids, I guess he calls them by their 2nd name, in this case, David and Daniel.) It's an extreme case, to be sure, but it brings up an important issue.

How many of our ideas about the world do we inherit from our family and how many do we independently form on our own? I believe that, like many things in life, this isn't so easily deconstructed and in truth, it's a complex combination of family influences and those of our social networks, communities and media influences, etc.

The bottom line here for me is that I think these kids should be given the opportunity to form their own opinions about their father's philosophies. There are many counterveiling influences to steer them away from jihad, not the least of which is their custodial mother. To assume that either one or both of these 11 and 13 year old boys will automatically become a threat to the U.S. by becoming a jihadist themselves is sheer lunacy.

Kids have minds' of their own, and they use them everyday, to make decisions that adults both encourage and are dismayed by. Sometimes we're thrilled and at times, disappointed by the decisions kids make, but they are their decisions to make, regardless of how their parents or the courts feel. The idea that these kids will become victims of their father's radical ideology is an insult to them and to young people across the country.

I'm no lover of jihadists and I'd certainly be a target for them if they do decide to walk down that tragic path. But that's their right as human beings to make those unfortunate decisions. And it's a right that at the end of the day, neither the courts, nor their parents, have much of an ability to curtail.

Besides, given the nature of adolescent rebellion, it's just as likely that these two kids raised with a "quasi-Muslim philosophy" will become Hassidic Jews, when exposed to their father's lunatic rantings, as it is that they will join Al-Qaeda.