Parental Rights

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the philosophical foundations of parental rights. Some commonly held accounts are rejected. The question of whether parental rights are property rights is examined. It is argued that there are useful analogies with property rights which help us to see that the ultimate justification of parental rights lies in the special value of parenthood in human life. It is further argued that the idea of generation is essential to our understanding of parenthood as having special value and that parental rights properly belong, in the first instance, to natural parents.     

当下关注和未来利益

对未来可作这样的区分：一是在政治上有资格考虑的未来,二是那些在政治上无资格考虑的未来。前一段时期的长度取决于实际上对现在的政治决策施以影响的那种未来利益。这些未来利益的性质与我们现在的利益的性质很相近,都是一种关涉到自己的利益。政治上无资格考虑的未来则是一个在我们所及的世界之我的世界,那个世界中的利益对我们来说 一个他考虑的利益。然而,政治上无资格考虑的未来利益应进入我们的道德考虑而不是深谋远虑的评价之中,对政治上无资格考虑的未来利益的关注型地是道德层面的事情。     

Democratizing Technology: Interests, Codes, Rights

This reply to criticism of Questioning Technology by Gerald Doppeltaddresses differences between political philosophy and philosophy oftechnology. While political philosophers such as Doppelt emphasize procedural aspects of democracy and equal rights, many philosophers of technologyimplicitly assume a substantive criterion of the good centered on thedevelopment of human capacities. Questioning Technology alsoemphasizes the diminishing agency of individuals in technologically advanced societies dominated by large scale organizations and themass media. These themes of social critique complement the main focusof political philosophy. Political philosophy must learn to addresstechnical issues as it has learned to address other social issuessuch as race and gender.     

Parental Positive Reinforcement With Deviant Children:

The purpose of this paper is to review data on the effectiveness of parental positive reinforcement with deviant children. Three areas are reviewed: Non-intervention studies, intervention studies, and consumer satisfaction studies. Results from the first two areas suggest that parental positive reinforcement is neither a necessary nor sufficient procedure to produce or maintain changes in deviant behavior. Results from the consumer satisfaction area indiciate that positive reinforcement is viewed by parents as being both an acceptable and a useful procedure. Therapist recognition of the limitations of positive reinforcement is stressed.     

The Evaluation of Parental Fitness in Termination of Parental Rights Cases: A Functional-Contextual Perspective

This article highlights issues involved in carrying out evaluations for termination of parental rights cases and suggests caution for mental health professionals doing such evaluations. It argues that current models of parenting that come from the child development and child maltreatment fields are too narrow in their focus to act as a foundation for such evaluations and are often based on research with select groups in our society making them open to bias. Similarly, it is argued that traditional assessment measures are limited in their utility for responding to the kinds of relational and basic care questions asked in such evaluations. A functional-contextual model is offered as an alternative with examples of potentially useful measurement strategies. With such a frame as a starting point, the field might progress to providing more useful information to courts. Future research directions to improve this practice arena are discussed.     

Parental Perceptions of Separating Children

Newer models of familial interaction emphasize the importance of parental perceptions of the child as determinants for his self-image and interpersonal functioning. This paper examines this issue in detail as it bears on the developmental phase of separation and individuation in adolescence.     

The Politics of Judicial Public Reason: Secular Interests and Religious Rights

This paper seeks a better understanding of the role of public reason in alimenting or defusing religious conflicts by looking at how courts apply it in deciding cases arising out of them. Recent scholarship and judicial decisions suggest, paradoxically, that courts can be biased towards either the secular or the religious. This risks alienating both religious majorities and religious and secular minorities. Judicial public reason is uniquely equipped to protect minorities, and its costs to religious majorities may be mitigated by accepting religious morality and identity claims in the political and legislative realm. Despite the political fragilities of judicial public reason, it is not intrinsically hostile to religious claims. It ought in fact to be fully equipped to recognize the equality and religious freedom rights that religious groups and individuals might assert in pursuing exemptions from general secular laws. Judicial public reason does have the potential to defuse religious conflicts, however much it falls short in practice.     

The Rights of Future People

ABSTRACT  It has been argued by some that the present non-existence of future persons entails that whatever obligations we have towards them are not based on rights which they have or might come to have. This view is refuted. It is argued that the present non-existence of future persons is no impediment to the attribution of rights to them. It is also argued that, even if the present non-existence of future persons were an impediment to the attribution of rights to them, the rights they will have when they come into existence constitute a constraint on present actions. Both arguments build on a suggestion of Joel Feinberg's. Next, three arguments are considered which, while they do not highlight the non-existence issue, are related to it. The view that the causal dependence, of (some) future people on present policies, erodes or weakens the claim that rights considerations should constrain our present actions concerning them, is considered and rejected. The view that future people can only have rights to what is available at the time at which these people come into existence is considered and rejected. So too is the view that the attribution of rights to future people involves, in virtue of resource scarcity, an unacceptable arbitrariness.     

Posttraumatic Response and Children Exposed to Parental Violence

Summary

In this article some of the literature on children's responses to natural and person-created trauma are discussed. In addition, data relevant to children's posttraumatic response as a result of exposure to interparental violence are presented. Using a factor analytic procedure, the study attempted to examine how the DSM-IV symptom clusters for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder come together for this sample of children. General suggestions are made regarding possible intervention with exposed children experiencing posttraumatic symptoms.     

Taking the Measure of Work Interests: Past,Present, and Future

The influence of work interests on employee behavior is often misunderstood. Accordingly, the potential of work interest measures to improve “high stakes” employee decision-making has been grossly underestimated. One organization that has taken work interests seriously however, is the U.S. military. The purpose of this article is threefold: (a) to summarize the rich history of military-sponsored research on work interests for employee selection and classification, (b) to highlight recent advances in work interest measurement from military-sponsored research, and (c) to outline the way forward for advancing work interest theory and measurement.     

Parental Cooperation with Social Services and Termination of Parental Rights in Israeli Court Cases of Child Maltreatment

Parental cooperation with social services in child maltreatment cases is fundamental to all forms of family intervention. If rehabilitation efforts fail and the child cannot be safely reunified with his parents, the state is authorized to initiate termination of parental rights (TPR) proceedings. Given the scant literature on parental cooperation and TPR, the present study examined associations between parental cooperation and TPR in Israeli court cases of child maltreatment. Comparisons between uncooperative (n = 106) and cooperative parents (n = 155) revealed that uncooperative parents were more than three times more likely to have their parental rights terminated than cooperative parents, controlling for child and parent characteristics. Parents who did not cooperate with social services had high levels of mental health problems, substance abuse, criminal records, and poverty and their children had more mental health concerns and suffered more from neglect. We discuss the important implications resulting from these findings, which include: the need to view the engagement of parents in the child welfare process as a specific goal in itself and develop research-based models specifically targeting multiple-problem families at high risk of TPR; the need for professionals to build a good working alliance with parents in order to strengthen their participation; the need to take into account different background conditions and stressors related to the parents in order to facilitate greater cooperation; and the need to assess the potential mental health needs of children involved in cases of maltreatment with low parental cooperation.     

Parental Alcoholism and Coping: A Comparison of Female Children of Alcoholics With Female Children of Nonalcoholics

The authors assessed potential differences between children of alcoholics and children of nonalcoholics in depression and choice of coping strategies. Although significant group differences were detected for level of depression, mean depression scores for both groups fell within the no depression range on the Beck Depression Inventory. No significant differences in coping strategies were detected.