In Philadelphia, parents can get slapped with a fine if their kids are on the street during certain school hours. The city also held a mandatory meeting for parents of chronic truants. Parents who failed to attend could have been fined or jailed. This Philadelphia school teacher believes that the laws requiring parents to make sure their kids attend school should be enforced much more strictly.
Parents have a great deal of responsibility for their children ethically, legally and socially. When parents won’t or can’t do a good job, they can be jailed or have their kids taken away from them. They need to protect their kids, care for them, and make sure they get to school. They need to make restitution when their kids harm other people or hurt their property.
Children are not considered to be responsible for their own behavior until they are sixteen, give or take a year or so. That is the age of consent in most states and countries in the world. In most states, you have to be over the age of 18 to be prosecuted as an adult for a crime, although, for some crimes you can be prosecuted as an adult when you are as young as 14.
Obviously, the age of acquisition of personal responsibility varies according to the person’s maturity. However, until the child become mature enough to be personally responsible, it seems like it is the parent’s responsibility to make sure their children don’t run amok in society. If the parents can’t do it, then the state can take over, and some say that’s punishment enough for the parents.
I think that the parents of children who get into trouble should be forced to attend and pass parenting classes, with the threat of jail if they fail to show up, or fail to pass. It’s far too easy to say that the kid is a “bad kid” and there’s nothing the parent can do. I think this is a copout in almost every case. I think that where children are mentally ill and being treated, their parents can not be held responsible. On the other end, where children are abused, the parents are obviously responsible, perhaps even up to the age of 18, or even 20.