Primary consideration on the best interest of the child in parenting
PUBLICLY calling a 14-year-old female student with defamatory words such as “makati ang laman,” “malandi” and “hindi matino” in front of her peers, teachers and parents is undoubtedly a harsh, degrading, and humiliating experience to which no child should ever be subjected. Uttering such words is held by the Supreme Court as not only against public policy but also contrary to the constitutional mandate of protecting the best interest of children.
While the right of parents to rear their children is also recognized by our Constitution, no less, this does not mean that they are free to do anything or adopt any means to ensure that their children grow to be in a certain mold, or in most cases, patterned after their own life and success.
In Spark v. Quezon City, the court explained that parents are not only given the privilege of exercising their authority over their children; they are equally obliged to exercise this authority conscientiously. The duty aspect of this right is a reflection of the State’s independent interest to ensure that the youth would eventually grow into free, independent, and well-developed citizens of this nation. For indeed, it is during childhood that minors are prepared for additional obligations to society. The duty to prepare the child for these obligations must be read to include the inculcation of moral standards, religious beliefs and elements of good citizenship. This affirmative process of teaching, guiding, and inspiring by precept and example is essential to the growth of young people into mature, socially responsible citizens.
Indeed, parents are given the rightful control and protection of their unemancipated children to the extent of their needs. The scope of parental authority extends to the protection of the children’s physical preservation and development, as well as the cultivation of their intellect and the education of their hearts and senses. But as explained by the court in Versoza v. People, in parental authority, there is no power but a task; no complex of rights but a sum of duties; no sovereignty but a sacred trust for the welfare of the minor.
This natural right and duty of a parent over their unemancipated children does not only focus on discipline but includes caring for and rearing them for the development of their moral, mental, and physical character and well-being. While laws do not prescribe in detail how parents must relate to or guide their child, the framework in all actions concerning children is one that gives primary consideration to the best interest of the child.
In Dorao v. Sps. CCC and BBB, the Court held that a parent must give due weight to a child’s views. A child must be respected as an active person in their own right with their own concerns, interests and points of view and should not be treated as a parent’s possession or merely as “an object of concern.”
While parents and legal guardians are bestowed with the right and duty to provide direction to a child, a child must still be accorded equal and inalienable rights consistent with the evolving capacities of the child. In this regard, evolving capacities must not be seen as an excuse for authoritarian practices that restrict children’s autonomy and self-expression and which have traditionally been justified by pointing to a child’s relative immaturity but rather as a “positive and enabling process.”
Thus, the best interest of a child cannot justify forms of cruel or degrading punishment that conflict with a child’s human dignity, including punishment that belittles, humiliates, denigrates, scapegoats, threatens, scares, or ridicules a child.
As they say, “Parents know best.” But not at all times. When parents attempt to justify abusive acts under the pretense of exercising parental authority over a child, the State knows better. As parens patriae, the State has the inherent right and duty to aid parents in the moral development of their children, and, thus, assumes a supporting role for parents to fulfill their parental obligations.