Parent's Rights and Responsibilities

We, the people, hold that both parents of a child have the following inalienable and fundamental rights as established by the Constitution of the United States and consistently supported by the case law record at the US Supreme Court.

1. The right to be fully involved, from the day of birth through emancipation, in our children's physical, emotional, moral, religious and ethical growth as an individual person.
2. The right to the comfort, care, and love of our children for not less than one half of the time from birth to 18 years.
3. The right to instill in them our moral, religious and ethical outlook with which we view the world.
4. The right to use all reasonable methods of discipline as we may select and direct during the time that the children are in our care, subject to the laws of the State in which we reside.
5. The right to determine what level of physical comfort they shall enjoy while in our care, so long as they are not neglected and do not suffer from a lack of the basic necessities of life.
6. The right to demand that our responsibilities be discharged through our own effort, time, and selection of agents such as health and child care providers, of our own free will and without coercion by another.
7. The right to consult with and review records from any outside care provider to our children, including but not limited to physicians, schools, social workers and other professionals engaged in the care, health, and welfare of our children.
8. The right to peaceful enjoyment of the previous enumerated rights, so long as the health, welfare and morality of our children are not endangered by our actions or manifest violations of the law or peace which directly bear upon the raising of our children.

We also hold that we have the following responsibilities as a consequence of our participation in the creation and gestation of one or more children:

1. The responsibility to provide for our children the basic necessities of life, including nutritious food, proper clothing, shelter and freedom from unwarranted and unreasonable danger about their domicile.
2. The responsibility to provide our children with an education to the standards of the state and country in which we reside, subject to our children's individual aptitude and desire, which may be discharged either personally, by private contract or through the public school system.
3. The responsibility to instill within our children a solid, acceptable moral and ethical code of behavior, such that they are able to function in a socially-acceptable manner upon emancipation into the world at large.
4. The responsibility to monitor the actions of our children and utilize appropriate preventive measures and discipline to prevent them from deliberately, or through negligence, causing gross harm to themselves, others or society as a whole.
5. The responsibility for the actions of our children - up to the age of emancipation - if our children, whether despite or due to lack of our oversight, cause harm to the person or property of another.