Freedom equates with having significant choice,based on inner principles and values,in matters that closelyaffect one's life.The choices made are unique and individual, not determined by societal forces to conform to standards and patterns of behaviour that prevail in a community. Freedom allows for action based on one's own inner motivation.
A free will is one that is not trammelled by internal psychological constraints,which may wittingly, or unwittingly, be as a result of the socialisation process in the home. Freedom is predicated on being independent to an extent. Parents need to optimalise their child's freedom by creating and fostering those conditions in which the realisation and
application of freedom may be protected.Freedom is essential to becoming a human person. A very restricted individual cannot attain the true status of a human person.
'moral individuals are persons who can be relied upon to respect rights and be sensitive to the lesser interests of others...more willingness to put them before our own (self interests).'
Rights aim to reduce oppression, exploitation,marginalisation, powerlessness, violence and cultural (including religious) imperialism (Jagger,2000,p 494). These manifestations serve the almost exclusive interests of the dominant in our society and children are often on the receiving end of such injustices. Benn &Peters talk of law acting as a constraint against constraints (1971, p 213). Freeman (2002, p 62) reminds that where justice prevails,appeals to rights are unnecessary.
Woodehouse uses the term 'generism ' to describe an ideal child centred legal regime, which would resonate with the standards that should exist between parents and their children in the home:
'Justice across generations,or generism,calls for a metaphor of dynamic stewardship, in which powerover children is conferred by the community, with children's interests and their emerging capacities the foremost consideration.
Stewardship must by earned through actual care giving, and lost if not exercised with responsibility. Generism would place children,not adults, firmly at the center and take as its central values not adult individualism,possession and autonomy, as embodied in parental rights, nor even the dyadic intimacy of parent/child relationships' (inFisher, 1997, p 423).
After considering the empirical position of the parent child relationship in the home,and how it is evolving in the era of human rights articulations, as well as considering the essential fundamental human rights values, especially as they apply to children in the home,two exemplars will be considered below to highlight the possible realisation of children's rights in the home in practice.
The first exemplar as to how children's rights could bedealt with in the home will fall under the rubric 'freedom from ...'. In the chapter that follows thereafter,a'freedom to ...' exemplar will be considered.
3.9 CONCLUSION
In this pivotal chapter,the fundamental basis for the rights of a child,is articulated.The argument draws on threads established in the previous chapters,that the child is a person in his or her own right and is therefore entitled to be accorded,in realistic terms,the fundamental rights, which are routinely available to adults.
Having established the principled basis of children's rights, especially in the private sphere,two exemplars are considered in the next two chapters, to outline rights which are .generally not accorded to children and the articulation as to why these rights should be
available for children in the home.
CHAPTER FOUR
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN THE HOME
'Nothing is a clearer statement of the position that children occupy in society, nor a clearer badge of childhood, than the fact that children are the only members of society who can be hit with impunity.' (Freeman in Fredman& Spencer, 2003, p
167).
'Itis shaming that the smallest and most vulnerable of people should be the last to be protected by law.' (Phillips& Alderson,2003, P 187).
'Children ought to be led to honourable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not blows norill treatment; for it is surely agreed that these are fitting rather for slaves than for the freeborn ... ' (Plutarch in Breen, 2006, p 108).
4.1 INTRODUCTION
Having established the universality of human rights values and the deficiencies in according children their rights, it is necessary to take an example of human rights values in the child's world, in the light of the axiological criteria in the previous chapter. A 'freedom from ... ' instance is considered.
The state has banned the use of corporal punishment for all citizens, but parents are entitled in law to administer hidings in the home. This is contrary to the spirit of tne
human rights initiatives and practices, that should apply to children,but which have not . been curbed by the state.
This example clearlyindicates howchildren should realisetheir respect for their person and their dignity,if they are to be treated as human beings of equivalent worth, entitled to be treated in a just way bytheir parents,and free from a practicethat is forbidden in the Constitution,even for the most loathsome convicted murderers and rapists.
The insights gained in this chapter will lead directly to the concept of an enlightened and empowered parent and its advocacy,envisaged in the sixth chapter.