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4 - Leaving home, rights to support and emancipation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jane Fortin
Jane Fortin
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Summary

Introduction

One of the most emphatic ways in which children and young people can assert their right to take responsibility for their own lives is by simply walking out – leaving their home and parents behind them. This is a drastic step. Most children, particularly teenagers, sometimes find their parents' ideas outdated and their attempts to discipline them tedious. In turn, parents may be reluctant to allow their offspring greater independence before they consider them ready to cope with it. Nevertheless, in well-functioning families, negotiation and compromise will ensure that both ‘sides’ emerge relatively unscathed. Sadly, increasing numbers of children and young people find life at home so unbearable that they vote with their feet and leave. The law presents them with a contradictory set of principles. There is confusion over whether they have the right to leave home at all, at what age they may do so, what rights they have on leaving and what rights their parents have to force their return.

Although it is currently impossible to obtain accurate estimates of the number of children and young people running away from home, it is clear that too many take this step. Young people leave for a variety of reasons: to escape ‘maltreatment’; arguments and family conflict; general unhappiness at home; problems at school, including bullying and exclusions. Surprisingly large numbers are quite simply told by their parents or step-parents to leave, or they feel forced to go.

Type
Chapter
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Children's Rights and the Developing Law , pp. 106 - 145
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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