Law Commons^™

The New Parental Rights, Anne C. Dailey, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article sets forth a new model of parental rights designed to free children and families from the ideals of parent–child unity and family privacy that underlie the law’s expansive protection for parental rights. The law currently presumes that parents’ interests coincide with those of their children, creating an illusion of parent–child union that suppresses the very real ways in which children’s interests and identities, even at a young age, may depart from those of their parents. Expansive protection for parental rights also confines children to the private family, ignoring children’s broad range of interests beyond the family and thwarting …