Parental Rights Are a Smokescreen for Child Ownership
Parental rights aren’t sacred, they’re being weaponized to turn kids into property. Protect children, not parents’ egos.
The concept of "Parental Rights" is increasingly weaponized by ideologues and industry to override science, dismantle protections, and assert control over children, not as autonomous humans, but as economic property. This exploitation is most visible in efforts to weaken child labor laws, and it’s a direct regression into the property-law roots of childhood in America.
The Core Problem: “Parental Rights” is a PR term for “Parental Ownership”
In the 19th century, children were legal extensions of the father’s will, property, labor, and heirs. And while we pretend we’ve progressed, modern lawmakers are now actively trying to drag us back to that precise model. The Arkansas Law Review essay makes this clear: Despite 80 years of precedent limiting child labor for health, education, and safety reasons, legislators are using “parental rights” to bulldoze those protections and shove kids back onto the meat grinder of the labor market.
And the gag is that it’s not even parents asking for this. It’s big business. It’s billionaires funding front groups like the Foundation for Government Accountability, wrapping their profit-driven exploitation in the soft gauze of "family freedom." What they really want is cheaper, more compliant labor, and minors, with no unions, no protections, and limited legal recourse, are the perfect target.
Parental Rights, Meet Historical Ignorance
Let’s be real: The average American doesn’t know that “Parental Rights” have never been absolute. The state grants conditional rights to protect children, not entitlements to dictate their lives. The idea that a parent "knows best" is romantic nonsense when the facts show that:
Many parents have no expertise in child development, mental health, or education.
Many are making decisions under duress, economic, ideological, religious, that do not prioritize the child’s wellbeing.
And some, let’s say the quiet part loud, are abusive, ignorant, or just plain negligent.
We don’t let people operate heavy machinery without a license, but we let people raise humans with no training, certification, or required reading list beyond maybe a Dr. Spock book from 1952.
The Dangerous Legal Foundation: Property Law and the Child as Commodity
The essay traces how parental rights historically included the right to collect a child’s wages, to indenture them, and even to withhold education. That’s not parental love; that’s asset management.
And in our modern context, we’re now allowing fourteen-year-olds to:
Serve alcohol,
Work in meat-packing plants,
And operate heavy machinery with “parental consent.”
That’s not freedom. That’s child commodification, rubber-stamped by a system that sees them not as individuals, but as little dollar signs in sneakers.
Google Parenting & Facebook Expertise: Where Reason Goes to Die
Layered on top of this industrial hellscape is the delusion that every parent is now a specialist in pediatrics, psychology, and educational theory because they read a blog post and watched a YouTube video. This rise of "do your own research" parenting isn’t empowerment; it’s ego-driven anti-intellectualism. And when fused with laws that enshrine these "rights," we effectively legalize ignorance.
It’s a perfect storm: parents who don’t know what they don’t know, lawmakers who don't care, and corporations who are thrilled to exploit the gap.
Children: The Most Marginalized Class No One Will Admit Exists
Let’s underline the most critical point: Children are arguably the most systematically marginalized population in America. They have no vote, income, or legal standing to assert their autonomy. They are entirely subject to the will of the adults around them, parents, employers, and lawmakers who may or may not have their best interests at heart.
The rollback of child labor laws, the evisceration of education rights, the bans on gender-affirming care, and the censorship of school libraries are not discrete policy fights. They are all part of the same grotesque ideology: that children belong to their parents, and parents are answerable to no one, not the state, not the child, and certainly not the data.
Conclusion: If We Love Children, We Must Stop Romanticizing Parental Dominion
Let’s be brave enough to say it: You don’t automatically know what’s best for your child just because you birthed or fed them. You must earn that authority by engaging with evidence, learning from experts, and recognizing that children are people, not your legacy, not your redemption arc, and not your workforce.
Suppose we’re not willing to call out the weaponization of “Parental Rights” for what it is: a corporate-backed rollback of child autonomy. In that case, we’re complicit in the quiet re-enslavement of the next generation.
