Feinberg A Child's Right To An Open Future Essay

Feinberg in his prominent work titled “A Child’s Right to an Open Future?” claims that parents should “sent [child] out into the adult world with as many open opportunities as possible, thus maximizing the chances for self-fulfillment” (Feinberg, 1980, p. 134-135). This right impose limits on parents’ influence on children, including limitation of their influence in regard to choice of culture and religion. Thus, Feinberg believes that parents violate children’s right to an open future if they bring them up in their (i.e. parents’) culture, because this will inevitably cause the child to be limited in his attitudes, thoughts and actions when he becomes adult. Therefore, there is a contradiction between parents’ moral right to bring their children in a certain cultural tradition and children’s right to an open future. However, I assume that parents’ moral right to bring up their child within …show more content…
Feinberg sees the limitation of child’s choice (or not providing a child with a chance to choose his own culture) as a violation of the child’s right to an open future. Right to an open future, in this sense, is a right that “…equip the child with the knowledge and skills that will help him choose whichever sort of life best fits his native endowment and matured disposition” (Feinberg, 1980, p. 134-135). So, according to Feinberg, if I raise my children in the Kazakh tradition, not offering them the possibility to learn and explore other cultures, I thereby violate their right to freedom of choosing their own culture, which is an integral part of their right to an open future. Religious parents, for Feinberg, also violate their children’s right to an open future, limiting children’s right to freedom and, consequently, limiting children’s way of thinking and