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by lkey 4 days ago
"becoming an adult" is a thing people do, this will include no longer agreeing with everything your parents taught you. This is mundane and what you have described.

"my parents are/were abusive" is something a plurality of people (and especially those raised in evangelical churches) experience.

Within that dynamic, the 'value' at issue here is 'Do I, your child, have a right to my own body and choices?'; Too often, the reply to that is 'no, we expect obedience and obeisance to God, your father, and your mother, in that exact order, because that is the one true way'.

This is a form of domination, not well-meaning 'protection'. It does, in fact, 'mess people up', in their intimate relationships most of all.

1 comments

"have a right to my own body and choices?"

Not sure exactly what you mean by own body. However, under the law children generally do not have a right to their own choices and are expected to be controlled by their parents (really look at the stutes around this stuff and you might be surprised). After all, parents are held responsible for their child's actions under the law.

I recommend you spend more time reading about jurisprudence. I’m not sure where you’re based, but in the US, for example, children below even age 13 can make autonomous decisions about their health when it’s determined that they have the capacity, even when the consequences may be life-ending. And, less relevantly, I personally believe this is the most moral option in such situations. If you have a 15% 1-year survival rate, all treatments either come with a small decrease in mortality, a large increase in risk for detrimental side effects, or both, and you can demonstrate to me that you understand the interplay of these factors, I don’t care if you’re 10 or 100, I believe you should have the right to bodily autonomy.
I am not surprised. I'm aware that the US never adopted:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

You have stated an unfortunate fact while hiding your value judgement. Do you think the laws you reference are correct, or no?

Do you understand the difference between having a responsibility to prevent your child from law-breaking and having absolute control over their life in general?

If you have children, or plan to, do you want to control every action they take to protect yourself from hypothetical legal consequence? Do you think you have the right to do so? Do you think you should be able to control what they think and express as well?

These questions are not hypothetical, as an answer in the affirmative is precisely what creates the type of abuse I described above.

The laws are to complicated to go into a full yes or no. But they mostly are. There are some things not covered by law which generally are controlled, such as the clothes, toys, and food bought for the kid.
Why do we allow people to teach a religion that requires someone to be old enough to have informed concent before they can decide to follow it for themselves, when at the same time we disallow sexual activity with those same individuals because they are not old enough to offer informed consent.