Don't treat children like mini-adults

All these fine people are concerned about the First Amendment rights of children. At issue is not the "production" of speech but its "consumption." From the viewpoint of civil libertarians, denying a child access to any cultural product is similar to someone saying go ahead and publish a book - but we will not allow anyone to sell or ship it.

If you say, "but we are limiting access only for children," the libertarians counter: "You never know who will want to read, say, a comic loaded with tobacco ads; to restrict access to children is tantamount to limiting access for all of us."

But, you wonder, what about devices that only keep children at bay, say, the filters in libraries (which adults can remove at will). The libertarians come back with the example of a teenager who wishes to find information about abortion or HIV but is afraid to let their parents know. Hence, libertarians argue, the need to allow children unfettered access.

All this disregards that children do not come in one size. Up to a certain age - say, 13 - they have few of the capabilities that make us hold that adults should be free to read or view whatever they want. Among the items children still have in short supply are needed information, experience, judgment, and values.

The point of education is to prepare children to be autonomous adults. If they were simply mini-adults from the get-go, whose bodies needed to grow but who otherwise had the capacity to act on their own, much of parenting would be superfluous. But until biotech preforms such a miracle, parents have not only the right but the duty to form educational environments for their children so that they can grow up to be the kind of adults civil libertarians seem to assume children to be. To proceed, parents need to choose what their children are reading, viewing on TV, and exposed to online.

Moreover, it makes no sense to treat all "minors," from 0 plus 1 day to 18 years of age, as if they were of one kind. Children gradually grow in their capacity. Restraints essential for toddlers and kids in primary schools become less compelling when they turn 13, and damaging for adolescents. (One may say that there are differences within each age group, but public policy cannot make endless distinctions - as we see, for instance, in the labeling of movies and CDs, which is also, by the way, opposed by libertarians.)

More is at stake here than what happens when you take your children to a library to check out a book or use a computer. At issue are the ways we treat children. Do we see them as having full court rights, especially First Amendment ones? Or do we consider them their parents' wards until they grow up, whenever that is, but surely not before age 13?

Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor at George Washington University. His most recent book is 'The Monochrome Society' (Princeton University Press).

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