Parents and Pedophiles -
Complementary and Conflicting Rights and Duties
A recent post by concerned_aunt got me thinking about the respective roles of parents and pedophiles in the lives of children. It occurred to me that although our community generally respects the role of parents in their children's lives, we may not always communicate that well - and that some parents may have fears that, reasonable or not, are real all the same - and often unaddressed by our community.
To a parent fearful of bad influences on their children, pedophiles may appear as a sinister force ready to take their children away from them - and the truth is, that is not always an unreasonable expectation. A former poster at this forum once told us about a girl he knew from a religious family who asked all the usual questions that children ask: Why is the sky blue? What makes a rainbow? Her parents answered all these questions the same: God made it so. Our colleague gave the girl the scientific answers. One day the girl declared to her parents that she wasn't so sure about this God thing, and her parents cut off all contact with our colleague because they rightly believed his actions had alienated their daughter from them - while ignoring the fact that their own actions had played a far larger role. The real question is, is outside influence usually positive or negative - and how do we find a way forward that is beneficial to everyone?
That brings me to the title of this piece: Parents and Pedophiles - Complementary and Conflicting Rights and Duties. First, let us note that sometimes a Right is also a Duty. By the Law of Nature, our first Right and our first Duty are the same: to survive. All other ethics hang on this - as without life there are no ethics. As such, the first Duty of an ethical person is to survive, and the first Right is Self-Defense. That does not mean other ideals such as love and cooperation are in conflict with this: on the contrary, cooperation and love for others are two of the most effective tools in the struggle for survival. Likewise, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, freedom of speech is also an essential survival tool.*
Scratch any set of laws and one will quickly find that all are founded on the will to survive, whether it be the survival of a community as a whole or just the survival of the influential parties that wrote the law. You will also find that some of these laws are in conflict with each other - whether because of competing interests within a community, or differences in environment that change the calculus of survival. Often ignorant people will even write laws that are detrimental to themselves, but they will believe they are acting in self-preservation. In consequence, we will sometimes see that different parties have not only conflicting Rights but even conflicting Duties. Guards enforcing a quarantine may have a duty to shoot any person attempting to leave the quarantined area in order to keep a contagion from killing many in the community, even as those in quarantine may have a duty - if the place is on fire or otherwise poses imminent harm greater than the danger of being shot - to attempt to escape.
So, too, we find the relationships between parents, pedophiles, and children. The role of a parent includes both protection and preparation - to keep a child safe and to prepare them to manage on their own in the world. These roles are sometimes in conflict: wrap a child in cotton wool and they may be safe for the present, but they will be less safe in the future; but fail to protect them in the present and they may not have a future.
The role of a pedophile is much the same as that of a parent - to provide a child with love and protection while preparing them to be an adult. The pedophile is a little further removed from the child, not always having the continuation of their own genes at stake, and so we might expect the pedophile to be a little less protective and a little more oriented towards preparation - but this is not a necessity. Some parents are careless about their children or even endanger them - and in such cases it may be the pedophile who offers safety while the parent offers preparation. In other cases, either may take the lead in specific fields - because people tend to be brave in different ways: one person may be physically brave but a social coward, and another person may be the converse; or one person might have courage in the face of opposition from other people, and another have courage in the face of natural disasters.
Children need more than one or two adults to help prepare them for life, and pedophiles are Nature's way of providing for that need - complementing the role of parents, but also sometimes in conflict with the wishes of those parents. Pedophiles allow children to break out of their dependence on their parents while providing some margin of safety and protection - and to provide this extra measure of preparation is not merely a Right that belongs to pedophiles, it is also a Duty - an ethical requirement - and it belongs to all adults, but pedophiles are often more naturally cognizant of it.
As contradictory as it might seem, the pedophiles who would prefer that a child never age play an important role in children becoming functioning adults.
As for the fears of parents - I expect those will always be present, especially as social changes have led to more single parents who need affirmation from their children, and fear not only the loss of a child but the loss of affirmation from that child. But any pedophile of moderate intelligence will understand the important role of parents in a child's life, and while they may offer a child relief from heavy-handed parenting, they will also seek to strengthen that relationship and help the child understand their parents' fears, concerns, and affection for their child. Parents and pedophiles are on the same side, but that does not mean they will always be in agreement - and the conflicts themselves, when handled well, can be an important part in a child's development as an independent and loving adult. While there may be failures in individual cases, society as a whole benefits from the arrangement.
*["In periods of aristocracy every man is always bound so closely to many of his fellow citizens that he cannot be assailed without their coming to his assistance. In ages of equality every man naturally stands alone; he has no hereditary friends whose co-operation he may demand, no class upon whose sympathy he may rely; he is easily got rid of, and he is trampled on with impunity. At the present time an oppressed member of the community has therefore only one method of self-defense: he may appeal to the whole nation, and if the whole nation is deaf to his complaint, he may appeal to mankind. The only means he has of making this appeal is by the press. Thus the liberty of the press is infinitely more valuable among democratic nations than among all others; it is the only cure for the evils that equality may produce. Equality sets men apart and weakens them; but the press places a powerful weapon within every man's reach, which the weakest and loneliest of them all may use. Equality deprives a man of the support of his connections, but the press enables him to summon all his fellow countrymen and all his fellow men to his assistance. Printing has accelerated the progress of equality, and it is also one of its best correctives." Democracy in America, Fourth Book, Chapter VII.]