Parents Reap What They Sow? — Inculcating values into children

By Leo Kee Chye

I read with interest the 2015 comments by Singapore celebrities Gurmit Singh and Quan Yi Fong who lay the blame of the contentious behaviour of Amos Yee, lock, stock and barrel on his parents. Amos Yee, a precocious seventeen-year-old teenager with a formidable intellect, seems to ruffle almost everyone’s feathers with his forthright albeit a bit over-the-top comments, while also attracts a large following.

Yet, in late 2014, born Joshua Alcorn but self-named Leelah Alcorn was a 17-year-old transgender who left a suicide note blaming his/her unsympathetic Christian parents before stepping on the tractor highway to end his/her life.

In the same year, the Singapore’s National Library Board removed some children books which were flagged by parents for their non-traditional family theme but due to public outcry were instead reinstated and moved to the adult section.

To what extent and on what justifications have parents to impose their own value-system or worldview on their children, with some degree of compelling and coercing certain behaviours and thoughts as well as promoting and prohibiting certain external influences, through the use of removal of privileges, verbal reprimands and corporal punishments. In this article, I shall examine the extent and justifications of imposing parents’ value-system in a contemporary society.

One school of thoughts advocates parents have every right to their children, based on nothing more than the fact that “they are my children and therefore I can do whatever I want with them.” However, such absolute authority has since every much curtailed in contemporary society. According to the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef), the convention on the rights of the child, ratified by nearly all countries, spells out the rights of the child to protection from all forms of abuse, neglect, discrimination and violence, both domestic and in public as well as the right to life, education and medical care. Only in the events when parents or guardians fail to discharge their end of the obligations should only the government intervene, assuming its legitimate role as parens patriae.

Even though parents’ authority over their children are no longer absolute but conditional and limited, they still exercise considerable influence over their children. For advocates of parental rights to impose their value-system on their offspring, nowhere is there more explicitly endorsed than in the convention which states that the respective government should recognise and respect the rights and duties of parents in providing their traditional, religious, ancestral, ethnical, political values and customs to their children. The government should not overstep their public boundaries into the private sphere of family. Imagine if this right is being usurped, all children are to be cast in the same mould determined by the state which will slowly but surely drive minority cultures, heritages, ethnicities, and religions into oblivion. Such official stance is definitely at odds with the spirit of multiculturalism and liberalism championed by the United Nations.

The convention also acknowledges the rights of the parents to the joys and fulfilments that come with parenthood. None is more important than the partaking of the same activities for parents and children. Parents who introduce and initiate their children to the game of football, its rules and rituals, and its community, will strengthen family bonds with the social settings serving as the support, which is no more different to a religious order, kinships group or association of people who share similar convictions and identities. It is unrealistic to demand the parents not to impose their value system on their children while participating in such activities where the parents are the representative members of that community.

A child, teenager and adolescent, classified by law, albeit with different degree, is not a full moral agent, at best a potential one. By a full moral agent, it refers to the person’s ability to make moral judgments based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. In most country, a child becomes a full-fledged autonomous citizen when he hit the age of majority which is between 18 to 21 in most countries. Children are not the best judge of their future interests, which is to acquire the relevant knowledge and skills in order to realise their full potential and therefore to join and be accepted in the society as a flourishing, reflective and responsible member. If children were to exercise their right to choose at a tender age, many would not even have completed basic schooling by choice as an example. Parents hence, in the fiduciary sense as an agent who are entrusted to look after the interests of their children, will decide on the behalf of the children, the principals, to maximise what is in the best interests of their children currently and their future. Because of the veil of ignorance of how and what the child will become the person to be when he grows up, the parents will base on their past experience, not unreasonably, of what it takes to become a full-fledged flourishing autonomous citizen; or base on the actions to which the parents themselves will take if they were to relive their life again, avoiding the remake of the same follies and working on things previously they neglected. No one, not even the state, have more at stake than the parents to see to the best interests of their children. No one, not even the state, are more intimate of the evolving capacities of the children than their parents. Therefore, the parents have every right to impose their value system as and when they deemed fit and proper.

Ultimately, upon reaching the age of majority and becoming a full moral agent, the child can choose to continue with the worldview imposed on him by his parents or to dump it for another. The initial value system he inherited from his parents serves a benchmark from which he can evaluate others. Forbidding parents to impart their value system will only lead to: One, the parents imparting no values leaving this vacuum to be filled by the state which is impractical and the values imposed by the state is no better than those by parents; Two. the parents imparting a myriad of value systems which is equally impractical and one needs not second guess the enthusiasm of parents preaching some belief to which they themselves don’t subscribe. There is no stopping as to what and which value system the child will embrace when he grows up; but at least during the stage of growing up, his parent’s should serve as his first moral compass.

However, the exact opposite can be said of the opponents of parents to impose their constricting and parochial worldview which does more harms than good.

In refuting the argument of preservation of multiculturalism, a child is not an extension, let alone a property of their parents. He is entitled to a life of an autonomous moral agent in society, not born to serve as a curator to some defunct culture or heritage with no more merit than about to be condemned to the curio of history.

Every parents should be entitled to the joy and fulfilment of parenthood but not at the expense of exacting an uncompromising, antiquated, intolerant value system, increasingly incompatible with modernity; hence setting back their children years compared to their peers. Moreover, in today’s consumer driven society, there is no lack of parent-child bonding activities which are as enjoying and rewarding if not more than those marked along clear religious, ethnical or racial demarcation.

With regards to the argument that children are only potential moral agent and therefore it is rightly that they subordinate their certain rights to their parents. But according to the convention of rights of children by Unicef, the international body also recognises the rights and responsibility should evolve in accordance to the evolving capacities and maturity of the child. Parents should gradually relinquish the insistence on matters of values and beliefs. Moreover, the article highlights the child’s right to be heard and consulted as well as the right to information from the Internet, newspapers, books and other media. No one, not even the state nor their parents are infallible in knowing what is supposedly the best interests for the children. A child is supposed to grow up to a person what he chooses to be, and not the carbon-copy or in the image of his parent. Even though in theory there is an opt-out option given to the child upon reaching the age of majority, the gradual incremental immersion into the value system exacted by his parent reaches an inextricable situation that makes exit all the more costly and dangerous. Children in many ultra-orthodox or extremely fundamental religious sects are routinely sacrificed on the pyre of their parents’ faith. Exit from the community often entails ostracism and discrimination from family, friends and the whole community. Moreover, the knowledge and skills acquired in the community upon the insistence of his parents are incompatibility and irrelevant to eke out a decent living once he thrusts himself inexorably into the contemporary society. That goes without saying the option is clearly no option.

In addition, the worldview of the parents brings inevitably in themselves pride (why their values are good) and prejudice (why other values are bad). All value system has its own degree of homophobia. Prejudices acquired by children will psychologically and physically set themselves apart from others, at worst, culminating only to intolerance and discrimination.

In answering this question, I propose the categorisation of values, not the value system, from the parents, into “Low”, “Middle” and “High” based on the cost of renunciation upon the age of majority of their children. Each value system has its several subcomponents which I assume could be individually examined or broken down.

“Low” category refers to time and effort to learn a skill or knowledge about things whereby the cost of renunciation is minimal. The skill of eating with chopsticks or putting on a certain customary dress should fall under this category as transition to eating with fork and spoon as well as wearing contemporary suit and tie involve little to no cost and effort. Parents by all means should be allowed and encourage such values to their children like honesty, integrity, mannerism and others, while withholding prejudices to those who share not the same values and act not the same creeds as them. There should a gradual lifting of bridle to external media as the children mature.

Values learnt or acquired that involve some amount of cost when renounced, I place them in “Middle” category. For example, learning to speak and write a special dialect requires time and effort but with close to no utility in the contemporary society. Parents should be allowed to impose such values like scripture learning, traditional handicraft or rituals, provided, by legal or social pressure, that their children also acquire contemporary and secular knowledge and skillsets alongside.

“High” category contains community dependent settings where upon renouncement will surely result in estrangement.  Such cost is astronomical as the child’s identity and self-worth are seared inextricably with the community from young, and exit to him is unthinkable. Moreover, values that include prejudices instilled into the child may perpetuate into intolerance and hatred. Government should play a bigger role in such scenario by limiting the rights of such community and establishing social, financial support as well as career and education for those who choose to renounce. Prejudices by parents remains an issue without legal recourse other than to be extenuated through social pressure.

To recapitulate, I believe parents should reap what they sow but not in the sense of a bonsai where deliberate wiring and pruning contorts the plant to the gardener’s desire, but in the sense of a nursery plant, becoming hardy and sturdy before transplanting to a freely flourishing environment in its own making.