Parent child relationship and Gene Therapy…

When taken by itself as a basis for the model of the parent/child relationship, it in opposition to the equal treatment thesis appears to leave us in a situation very similar to that of the ownership model. When taken in conjunction with the equal treatment thesis there is a definite tension that appears to be created. One the one hand we are saying that children deserve the same consideration as adults, yet on the other we are saying that it is okay for parents to treat children differently from other adults. This is not the case. The two claims are not necessarily inconsistent because as claimed by Noggle and Brennan, “children can have a total package of rights and duties that differs from that of an adult; yet this is compatible with children having the same moral status, and thus the same basic right, as any other persons.” This is because the purview of each of these claims is different. The first, the equal treatment thesis, suggests that children have the same basic, human rights’ that other members of the species have and as a result of this, they must be accorded the same moral consideration. This does not necessarily conflict with the unequal treatment thesis, as it is quite conceivable for people to have the same basic rights, yet have very different total packages of rights. This is because not all rights are basic right, some rights derive from basic rights, others come about as a result of roles that people adopt and the choices they make within society. So therefore, providing the child’s basic rights are not infringed then it seems that this claim will not be inconsistent with unequal treatment in other areas. This means that all children must at the very least be accorded rights such as life, liberty and freedom from deliberate harm. If these rights and what they entail are upheld then parents can treat their children unequally in other areas.