anonymous question

The principle of self-ownership means that every person belongs to themselves. A child, however, is a person who, due to the finite speed of development of the human organism, is not yet perceived by other people as fully legal-capable. Therefore, while they do own themselves, they do not actually exercise full disposal of themselves—the right to dispose of the child is partially usurped by one adult or another (a fully legal-capable person), with the consent of other adults.

And then a situation arises where the way this adult exercises this usurped right ceases to satisfy the child. It does not matter whether it is a case of direct physical violence, psychological violence (regardless of what adult behavior is called such), or simply a clash of tastes. What matters is that at any moment, the child can both declare their full legal capacity and delegate the right of partial disposal of themselves to any other adult—that is, offer them to assume the rights of a guardian—provided, of course, they can come to an agreement with the candidate for guardianship. In this case, it is simple. The adult who, in the child’s opinion, performed their guardianship duties in bad faith, is deprived of the corresponding rights, and now nothing protects them in the event of violence against the child.

But what if the child does not insist on stripping the adult of their guardianship rights (being too young, too intimidated, or, most likely, generally satisfied with the situation), yet from the point of view of an outside adult, the guardianship duties are being performed unsatisfactorily? All that an outsider can do without penalty is to express their judgment on the matter, share this judgment with other adults, try to explain the child’s rights to them—in short, apply all the rich tools accumulated by humanity for the peaceful resolution of misunderstandings.

If for some reason they consider such measures insufficient, they may, of course, decide to use violence, thereby turning the conflict into a war, but as a fully legal-capable person, they must realize that they are fully responsible for the consequences of this decision, and that these consequences may not be what they expected.