Clarifying Vulnerability - the Case of Children

Ethics and Social Welfare

This special issue deals with ethical topics concerning the relation of children's well-being and vulnerability. The concepts are linked in some way, but there are many open questions about their precise relation. The papers of this collection intend to contribute a little to clarify things. Many people believe, for example, that children are in need of care by adults in order to have flourishing lives. This paternalistic attitude is rooted in the assumption that children's wellbeing is more fragile than adult's and this, in turn, is usually combined with a general paternalistic attitude towards children. While there is a pro tanto plausibility of this picture in the case of very young children, it looks less plausible in the case of older children and adolescents. It is important to note that questions like this already arise at the conceptual level. To start with children's well-being: it is a multidimensional concept (Alexandrova 2017) at the descriptive and at the normative level. We can see an increasing amount of indicators used to measure children's well-being (Ben-Arieh et al. 2013). Contemporary empirical research on children's well-being is not only interested in rudimentary conditions of well-being such as health and housing but takes a much more refined perspective, incorporating indicators of children's education, social lives and participation. Yet it is still controversial which indicators should be used and how they should be categorised and balanced against each other in the case of conflicts (Raghavan and Alexandrova 2014). The clarification of these normative questions belongs to the business of philosophy, and there is indeed a growing body of literature in the field (Bagattini and Macleod 201 5; Schweiger and Graf 2015; Drerup 2016; Tomlin 2016; Calder, Gheaus, and Skelton 2019). Three main topics are discussed: first, how children's well-being is related to autonomy and paternalism, second, which theory of well-being is appropriate to define children's well-being, and thirdly, questions concerning the authority over the definition of children's well-being. These topics are obviously interrelated in many complex ways, and the notion of vulnerability plays a vital role in many regards. Childhood is arguably the most vulnerable period of human life. Children are highly dependent on others to satisfy their basic needs, and this makes them particularly vulnerable. This is, of course, true for other stages of life as well. Many elderly people, for example, are not able to care for themselves. However, they are at least in principle entitled to choose the persons that care for them, and not all elderly people are dependent in the same way as children are. The situation of children seems to be categorically different, insofar as they do not start, as elderly people normally do, from a position in which they are autonomous, i.e. entitled to make their own decisions about their course of life. Children are dependent on decisions that others make for them right from the start. This seems to be the most salient source of children's vulnerability. But even this allegedly uncontroversial position is not undisputable. Some critics point out that depicting a whole group of people as vulnerable has always the air of stigmatization. A more influential line of criticism holds that generally considering children as vulnerable is too vague to account for more specific aspects of children's vulnerability. The debate on vulnerability is very much coined by the idea that there are situational vulnerabilities, viz. vulnerabilities that are brought about by specific contextual features (Goodin 1986). The more current trend in the debate is, however, to reconcile both, the ontological and the situational

In this paper we want to examine the particular vulnerability of children from an ethical perspective. We want to defend three claims: firstly, we will argue that children's vulnerability is best conceptualized as a developing quality, meaning that as children progress through childhood, their vulnerability also undergoes particular changes. To capture this we want to distinguish physical, mental, social, and symbolic vulnerability, which vary according to certain features such as age, maturity, gender or race. These different traits are, secondly, important to understand what we owe children from an ethical perspective. In a nutshell, children have moral claims not to be harmed and to be protected against threats to their well-being and well-becoming, and these claims have to be explicated via the developing vulnerability of children. Finally, we will argue that one of the main issues is to balance the protection of children and their autonomy claims, which both enhance and diminish their vulnerability. 0 Introduction (250 words) Vulnerability is a key concept in the ethics of childhood. Many authors use it as an important characteristic that is necessary for grasping the special moral status of children, for clarifying what their well-being consists in and for identifying and combating certain threats towards children (Mullin 2014a; Benporath 2003; Macleod 2015). While we fully agree with the importance that is attributed in these and related works to the concept of vulnerability, we believe that some features of the special vulnerability of children have not received sufficient attention. In this paper, we would like to address some of these shortcomings. In the first part, we will draw attention to the fact that children's vulnerability is best conceptualized as a developing quality, meaning that as children progress through childhood, their vulnerability also undergoes particular changes. Children, as developing beings, do not possess one generic or homogenous vulnerability, rather there are many different forms of vulnerabilities which depend both on how children are and the context in which they live. To capture this we want to distinguish physical, mental, social, and symbolic vulnerability, which vary according to certain features such as age, maturity, gender or race. In the second part, we will explore the ethical significance of children's particular vulnerability. Assuming that children have moral claims that their vulnerabilities must not be exploited and that they should be protected against such harms, we will argue that their vulnerability is essential to explicate the content of these moral claims in detail. What counts as a morally wrong action towards children is interwoven with their developing vulnerability and their moral claims are thus developing ones as well. In the third part, we will turn to the relationship between children's autonomy and their vulnerability. We will argue that children are entitled to practice and develop their autonomy in line with their level of development and maturity. However, they have also claims to well-being and to autonomy in adulthood, which have to be carefully balanced against each other to determine what liberties should be granted to children. The insight that children's autonomy is both a vulnerability-enhancer and a vulnerability-diminisher is crucial in this regard.

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72 References: 1,783 words Abstract The paper summarises the evidence and provides definitions of risk, protective factors, resilience, coping strategies and need in the context of children in need. Definitions are offered for children in need and children's services. The way in which individual interpretation can alter objective assessment of risk is explored. A method for recording evidence relevant to clinical practice on behalf of children in need is offered. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Etikk i praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics

Increasing philosophical attention has recently focused on questions of the nature of vulnerability, and of the implications of recognizing and responding to vulnerability in human agents and subjects. Within that field of interest, explorations and analyses of the specific vulnerability of children have raised many interesting questions regarding the nature of childhood and the vulnerability-responsive obligations of parents. By contrast, there has been no philosophical recognition or discussion of parental vulnerability within the parent-child relationship. In this paper I seek to address that theoretical gap, exploring the distinct ways in which parents are vulnerable qua parents, as well as some of the normative implications that follow from a recognition of that vulnerability. These implications include claims of a vulnerability-based foundation for extensive parental authority over children, and the significant role of expanded social structures and mechanisms to more adequate...

Ethics and Social Welfare, 2019

In liberal ethics, it is generally assumed that adults are autonomous and independent, whereas children are non-autonomous, dependent and vulnerable. It has been pointed out, however, that all persons are vulnerable. This view seems to blur the distinction between childhood and adulthood. In this essay, I discuss whether introducing a notion of universal vulnerability really undermines the common liberal view on childhood and adulthood. My main claim is that this is not the case: even if all persons are vulnerable, children must still be seen as specially vulnerable. I make clear that the attempt to elucidate the special vulnerability of children leads back to a distinction between children and adults that is based on the concepts of autonomy and independence. For the purpose of this argument, I develop a two-level notion of vulnerability. Against this background, I further argue that while the classical distinction between childhood and adulthood should be maintained, there is reason to reconsider what it means to be an adult or a child. I also claim that some forms of vulnerability in children are worth being cultivated.

Care-Connect Working Paper Series No. 1, 2013

Childhood Vulnerability Journal

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of interest in children and childhood studiesfrom academics, policy makers, and practitioners working with children and families. This interest reflects several shifts in perspectives on children and childhood which have revolutionised thinking about childrenfrom 'objects' to 'subjects' to 'agents', and from 'becomings' to 'beings'. These shifts have been informed by a range of academic and policy developments. The development of the new social studies of childhood has posed an important challenge to developmental approaches to understanding children and childhood. While traditional, developmental approaches position children as interesting because they are growing towards adulthood, newer sociological approaches position children and childhood as a source of interest in their own right, during childhood and not only because children will later become adults. Biological immaturity is a factbut the precise nature of 'childhood' is socially constructed, and varies according to time, place, and culture. These academic developments have informed and coincided with policy changes. The need to respect children and childhood as of relevance in its own right has been promoted by the phenomenally successful United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which sets out for children a range of rights supplemental to the human rights accorded to all irrespective of age, reflecting their unique social and developmental position. Importantly, these rights are not just about protecting children from harm and providing for their developmentthey also relate to children's

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2016

This paper is the introduction to a special issue on vulnerability in medical contexts published in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics in 2016. First paragraph: Conceptions of the moral relevance of vulnerability in human life have assumed a deserved prominence in contemporary work in both moral philosophy and political analysis. In the mid-1980s, two important books emerged which had, and continue to have, significant influence within moral and political philosophy and beyond. Those books were Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness [1] and Robert Goodin’s Protecting the Vulnerable: a Reanalysis of our Social Responsibilities [2]. More recently, Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, and Susan Dodds edited a collection of essays on this topic in Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy [3]. The essays in this special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics are given context by these important contributions, and can be situated in helpful ways by considering the frameworks set up by them.