This is a long post, so get ready.

One one extreme, some parents have total and absolute respect for their kids privacy, and won't snoop at all. At the other extreme, some parents watch and even control every aspect of their kids lives. Notice that I say these are extremes. In this case, a parent reads journals and records phone calls.

Sarah believes journals and diaries are sacred. I agree. But that's about where my agreement stops.

The crux of my disagreement is from the inherrent nature of the parent-child relationship. This relationship is fundamentally different than the adult-adult relationship, and here's where I believe the differences lie:

Children, from birth to emancipation, are the complete responsiblity of their parents. They can't vote, they can't drink, view pornography, or sign almost all legal documents. They are required by law to attend school, and are subject to legal curfews in many places. It requires the intervention of their parents to do many of these things on their behalf.

Throughout history, children have always been the responsibility of their parents. In most cases, when a child commits an offence, his/her parents are held responsible. The parents are, in effect, the child's representative to the larger society.

As everyone knows, small children lack many of the abilities, mental and physical, of older children and adults. As a child grows, he grows in knowlegde and wisdom. Until at such age as the child can responsibly make choices, those choices must be monitored. Good choices are rewarded, and bad choices are punished. This is called training, and it's role is to teach the child right and wrong behaviors.

There comes an age, usually before or during puberty, where the child starts becoming self-aware. The child's relationships with other people becomre more complex, like an adult's. At this age, simple punish/reward training is not as effective, and building character becomes more important than shaping behavior. The goal is to teach right and wrong thinking, so that the child can grow into an adult that makes good decisions.

However, a child at this age still does not have the experiences necessary to provide a rich basis on which to make good decisions. Parent's can and should teach their children through open and rich communication coupled with a safe and secure parent-child relationship. Almost all children at times will flat out ignore what their parent's tell them, and will want to experience things for themselves. This is normal. It's at this point the parents must be willing to stand firm and provide reenforcement of their lessons through punishment. For older children, this usually involves revoking a privilage (taking away the car, restricting the phone, grounding, etc.)

I think that everyone agrees that parent's have the right to punish. This is a basic property of the parent-child relationship. There are several other properties of this relationship that are different from the adult-adult relationship. One is that the parent has a special responsibility to the child - to protect her, to love her, to provide for her well-being, etc.

So, over the growth of the child from infant to adult, the rights (granted by the parents) of the child grows as the parent's allow the child to assume more and more responsibility for herself. Two facts to remember here: (1) until emancipation, the parents have ultimate responsibility, and therefore (2) the parents have ultimate rights.

Yes, I know this is hard, but the parents have the ultimate rights.

A child has no inherrent right to money, pizza, an XBox, their own phone, go where they want, dress how they want, take whatever drug they want.... or even privacy. You heard me... a child has no inherrent right to privacy. This includes phone calls, notes, whereabouts, and even journals.

Now, I'm not advocating that all parents should just barge in on their children's private things. And, yes, children should have private things! For a child, privacy is a privilege earned, and it's earned more and more as the child grows and demonstrates responsibility with the privilage. The child must know, however, that it is a privilage and she should treat it as such. She should know that if the parent has any reason to suspect the privilage is being abused, the parent has a right to invade that privacy at any time. Like anything of value, a privilege earned is more valuable than one just given.

How does a child abuse the privilage of privacy? To me, any behavior exhibited by the child that indicated wrong thinking or bad decisions involves an abuse of privacy, because the child will naturally try to hide such behavior. How many of you told your parents that you just got a blowjob, or shoplifted, or cheated at school? Or maybe the child's behavior is changing, and you need to know why. It is the parent's responsibility to protect and train the child. It is not the child's right to do whatever they want in total secrecy.

So hopefully this gives a decent rundown of where I stand. Remember, this is all in relation to the parent-child relationship. Once the child is grown, the relationship changes. The new adult has a complete right ro privacy... and also has complete responsibility for their own lives.

All adults should respect another adult's privacy, or any other right inherrent to an adult human being. On the flip side, all adults should take responsibility for themselves and their own actions. If a child is brought up well, they will do both.