| | Conceptually I've divided rights into different parts.
The first and universal kind of rights are moral rights. Moral rights are the consequence of having the ability to conceive them in a non-contradictory fashion such as the right to be left alone, the right to be free to act [provided you leave others alone to do theirs freely], and so on. These come from the basic premise that you are your own life so no other can claim it, and you are the only one responsible to it for its sustainment and the consequences of the actions derived from it. These kinds of rights, as I stated earlier, are universal by virtue that anyone can conceive them without special theories to derive them, they are based on root axioms such as existence, identity, and non-contradiction.
The second kind of rights are legal rights, or rights derived from contract such the "right of way", which does not in itself require moral rights to exist yet is indeed based on a similar function of them, being non-contradictory and can be derived from axioms [but not necessarily so]. Such rights can only exist by virtue that they do not conflict with moral rights and their root axioms, thus they can be conceived of as contingent rights as well, being that they are not necessary in themselves, but they do offer a benefit from those who construct them as part of their contract, allowing for safe transaction of wealth in exchange for wealth of other goods or services and other similar procedural engagements.
Other kinds of rights exist, but can be considered arbitrary such as the "right to work" or "right to education", which require a violation of moral rights, thus in themselves are not valid by virtue of the stipulation set for legal rights. One can't have the right to work if it means stealing from the employers or other employees to make that work possible. No one can have a right to an education if it means stealing from the teachers or other students to make that education possible. Or to steal from anyone for any reason to provide for such so-called rights.
As this applies to children, their reach on rights are based more or less on the principle that if we consider the alternative of either respecting no rights for them [or not gifting them] then it follows that no rights can be respected for other humans, thus the system of rights, moral and legal, would collapse since it implies that these rights have no use to us or to children. Rights in this regard are tools to utilize human actions related to survival. They improve life, not hinder it. And they improve the means to develop complex social engagements by which legal rights are possible, and complex economies can form. In essence, I'm proposing that without rights, the alternative is death and decay, thus why rights, although not inherent, are necessary for human survival, just as our knowledge of medicine may not be inherent, but it is equally essential to human survival, and so on.
Then when considering the fact that children born into the world depend on their parents to care for them, it is not an obligation that parents care for their young, but rather they knowingly conceive them, thus are responsible to their care just as I am responsible to the care of my property that I make or purchase by the same reasoning in that I 'conceived' it by my labor of a different kind. When you give your child up to another person, you are giving up that part of your labor that produced the child as well, to another, even though the child itself is not property, but none the less there is a kind of property made at the child's conception, a stewardship 'deed' as it were.
-- Brede
(Edited by Bridget Armozel
on 4/18, 12:18pm)
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