The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of children to have a name, to know who their parents are (art. 7 UNCRC), to have their identity – including name and family relations – preserved (art. 8 UNCRC) and to have their own views expressed and heard (art. 12 UNCRC). Moreover, in order to supervise proper application of these rights, the – howbeit vague – concept of the best interest of the child was developed. Notwithstanding the widely acceptance in domestic laws of the Convention as international source of law, the child’s best interest argument is often instrumentalized to legitimize conflicting political and cultural positions: libertarians v. authoritarians, secularists v. believers, women v. men, courts v. parents, parents v. each other. I assume this is the result of an adultocentric approach to family law. As tThe legal processes of child naming, and medically-assisted procreation is area shining examples of this distortion.: it has opened new possibilities for parenthood (from genetic, gestational and social mothers to genetic and social fathers, from single parents to same-sex parents) but it has required creative regulation and the welfare of the children born in these ways does only apparently seem to have had a predominant role. Today, the law in western countries falls short of protecting the full spectrum of human dignity; it protects the dignity of existing beings, the dignity of the adults. In theory, the action of public authorities, whether legislative or judicial, is to satisfy human needs. In practice, however, what is being satisfied are individual wishes whose only limits are set by their feasibility. My aim is to contribute to the search for remedies to the adultocentrism in contemporary family law from an international and comparative perspective starting from the beforementioned examples of regulation: child’s naming and assisted reproductive technologies.
Diurni, A. (2024). Identity values in conflict between adults and minors. In E.G.a.T.V.H. F. Swennen (a cura di), Rethinking Law’s Families and Family Law (pp. 68-83). Edward Elgar Publishing [10.4337/9781035338412.00010].
Identity values in conflict between adults and minors
Diurni, Amalia
2024-11-01
Abstract
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of children to have a name, to know who their parents are (art. 7 UNCRC), to have their identity – including name and family relations – preserved (art. 8 UNCRC) and to have their own views expressed and heard (art. 12 UNCRC). Moreover, in order to supervise proper application of these rights, the – howbeit vague – concept of the best interest of the child was developed. Notwithstanding the widely acceptance in domestic laws of the Convention as international source of law, the child’s best interest argument is often instrumentalized to legitimize conflicting political and cultural positions: libertarians v. authoritarians, secularists v. believers, women v. men, courts v. parents, parents v. each other. I assume this is the result of an adultocentric approach to family law. As tThe legal processes of child naming, and medically-assisted procreation is area shining examples of this distortion.: it has opened new possibilities for parenthood (from genetic, gestational and social mothers to genetic and social fathers, from single parents to same-sex parents) but it has required creative regulation and the welfare of the children born in these ways does only apparently seem to have had a predominant role. Today, the law in western countries falls short of protecting the full spectrum of human dignity; it protects the dignity of existing beings, the dignity of the adults. In theory, the action of public authorities, whether legislative or judicial, is to satisfy human needs. In practice, however, what is being satisfied are individual wishes whose only limits are set by their feasibility. My aim is to contribute to the search for remedies to the adultocentrism in contemporary family law from an international and comparative perspective starting from the beforementioned examples of regulation: child’s naming and assisted reproductive technologies.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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