Should Children Be Scene as Legal Entities?

I enjoy reading the news, and sometimes I will find something that touches at my heart. I once heard a valuable saying, and I would like to share that with you. 'We worry about things that have not even happened yet'. This saying is very true. I worry all the time about my children. I worry about someone stealing them away from me, someone violating them and someone killing them.

As a parent it is my responsibility to protect my children from 'evil' people that would wish to cause them harm, both physically and mentally. It bothers me a lot when I read in the news about a parent killing their own child.

Time has a very interesting article about the top ten crimes of 2009. I went through this list, and not crime involved a parent killing there own child.. After I got that reading that I clicked on another link on the Time Magazine website. The article, written by Bruce Crumley, was 'Why are French Women Killing Their Babies'.

To sum up the basis of the crimes, three females murdered their new born babies and hid there bodies from the child's father. Between three women, they murdered 17 infant children. Experts have explained these are cases of pregnancy denial.

Pregnancy denial is when a mother is pregnant, yet mentally does not accept she is. So when the time comes, they kill the child to keep their reality. For these women, it is such a strong belief that they do not even have an abortion because they do not feel they are pregnant.

If you would like to read more on this story, the title is called 'Why are French Women Killing Their Babies', and can be found on Time.com.

The question is 'What would possess any parent to kill their child?'. To me, that is the most heinous crimes imaginable. Slate.com posted an interesting article on the subject. 'When parents kill', a featured article on slate.com was another interesting article, because it list a lot of facts I never knew existed.

In this article, they state that children five and under are more likely to be killed by a parent. They also wrote that woman kill their children either out of act of love or punishment for themselves, while men kill their children because they feel they lost control. Between, 1976 and 1999, 30 percent of children under five were killed by their mothers, while 31 percent were killed by there fathers.

What was interesting about all of this for me is they state that children are more likely to be killed by a parent, than by anyone else.

You can read more of this article at slate.com. The article is called 'Why Parents Kill', and it was written by Dahlia Lithwick.

Another thing that bothered me on this article is children are considered property of the mothers. Lithwick made a very strong point at the end of her article about looking at children, not as property, but legal entities.

I want to agree with her, but I can not fully give 100% to that statement. The reason is because I am a mother. I am responsible for my children. It is my sole duty to take care of them, to feed them, to raise them, until they reach an age when they can take care of themselves. Are they my property - no. Are they legal entities - no.

This is why. If my child was to break a law, I could be held responsible for them. Until they are fully able to understand what they are doing, than they should not be considered nor scene as legal entities. In most cases, children can not take on legal responsibilities because they do not comprehend what they doing, hence making it so they are not eligible to be legal entities. Yet, at the same time they are not property. We do not own are children. We are responsible for them, but we do not own them. The term property is a very offensive word in describing a child's relationship to their parents.

Another reason is because of the elderly. My grandmother past away a couple of years ago. Within a month before her death, she was no longer able to care for herself. As we grow older, we reach a point where we need someone to take care of us, whether a family member or a nursing home. Does that make us property of whoever is taking care of us?

My dog is my property, but my child is a human being that needs guidance and love. That is how children should be seen. Not as legal entities or property, but as human beings we need someone to take care of them and guide them to making the right decisions so that someday they can become legal entities.