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by jimbojohn
5718 days ago
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So moral absolutes apply to adults but not children? There is never a case when spying on an adult could save their life? I'm not sure about your examples. If you suspect your child may be suicidal, talk to him or her. If you do NOT suspect bullying or cutting, how do you know that spying is justified? I think you're "begging the question." |
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This much I know: an absolute right to privacy does not apply to children.
Like you I mean this in the ethical sense: there are (IMO) beyond doubt cases where it is ethical for a custodial parent to invade the privacy of a child, possibly without the child's knowledge or consent. But I suspect this is also a legal fact virtually everywhere, which suggests to me that this may not be a controversial perspective.
I'd be surprised to find and interested in understanding the perspective of a parent that disagrees.
This seems like a no-brainer to me: at some stage kids just aren't capable of managing their own lives. I would take action to stop my (hypothetical) 13-year-old child from cutting just as I would take action to stop my 3-year-old child from playing with knives. The actions would be different. Talking about it would certainly be a preferred option, probably the preferred option, in dealing with the 13-year-old. If it came to monitoring, telling the child that their communication will be monitored would be preferable to not telling them. But I certainly wouldn't just throw up my hands as say "c'est la vie" if those things didn't work and I certainly wouldn't hesitate to invade the child's privacy if I thought it would have a positive impact in the long run.
I did not and cannot make a universal statement about "moral absolutes", only about the "right to privacy".
Personally I'm not sure whether or not an absolute right to privacy applies to adults. You make one argument against it (for their own protection). Personally I disagree with that, I think that if you are a mentally competent adult eventually society has to give you the flexibility to harm yourself if you choose to, but I can understand where that argument is coming from. There are other arguments against an absolute right to privacy that I think are more widely accepted, such violating an adult's privacy for the protection of others, but that's a slippery slope to go down.
Also, re:
> If you do NOT suspect bullying or cutting, how do you know that spying is justified?
one of us must be misunderstanding the other. I'm in 100% agreement with you. If I did not suspect an issue that could be helped by "spying", I wouldn't be doing it.