3 - Adolescent autonomy and parents

Summary

Introduction

Adolescents are fast approaching adulthood, but they cannot be expected to make the transition from childhood to an adult legal status successfully without assistance. They need to develop complex skills for independent life in our relatively wealthy and technologically sophisticated society. Although parents have an essential part to play in this process, the law should also assist by ensuring that an adolescent's decisions are, as far as possible, respected. The growing emphasis on adult autonomy encouraged by the implementation of the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 has produced a judicial willingness to accommodate such ideas when interpreting adolescents' interests. The words of Baroness Hale of Richmond exemplify such an approach:

Important physical, cognitive and psychological developments take place during adolescence. Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty; from puberty to adulthood, the ‘capacity to acquire and utilise knowledge reaches its peak efficiency’; and the capacity for formal operational thought is the forerunner to developing the capacity to make autonomous moral judgments. Obviously, these developments happen at different times and at different rates for different people. But it is not at all surprising to find adolescents making different moral judgments from those of their parents. It is part of growing up.

It is, however, unrealistic to expect children of any age to make decisions for themselves before they are developmentally ready to do so.