Parental responsibility: State of nature or nature of the state?

Abstract

“Parental responsibility” is a central concept in the Children Act 1989. The expression can represent two ideas: one, that parents must behave dutifully towards their children; the other, that responsibility for child care belongs to parents, not the state. This article shows how the second idea came to replace the first as the dominant conception during the development of the legislation. It is further argued that parental responsibility in the second sense rests upon an ideology which identifies the legal concept of parental responsibility with a perception about the ordering of relationships in the natural world, and that this explains the character which parental responsibility takes in the legislation. The article examines how this ideology has led to a weakening of the supervisory role of the state over the parent-child relationship and some possible practical implications of this development.