Decision Making by Children

Melton, Gary B.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-4289-2_2

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Fourth, children often may benefit from the experience of decision making even if their skill in generating and expressing reasons for their decisions is underdeveloped. There is a huge body of research showing that for children as well as adults, perceived and actual control are highly correlated, and perceived control is related to mental health, educational achievement, and treatment compliance (see generally Melton, 1983, and citations therein). Perhaps the most direct effect of participation is in the development of democratic values and behavior; participation begets further civic involvement across the life span.…”

Section: The Misdirected Focus On Competencementioning

confidence: 99%

Parents and children: Legal reform to facilitate children's participation.

Melton¹

1999

American Psychologist

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The mandate in the law and ethics of human rights to take children seriously as people usually should not be framed as deference to parents or children. Rather, careful efforts to promote the participation of children-to help them to feel that they are heard-will usually bring parents (and other adults) and children together in shared decision making. Such recognition reframes the core problem of children's law to be the creation of structures to facilitate such intergenerational involvement, not the choice of the age at which children's decisions should be recognized as authoritative.

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Section: The Misdirected Focus On Competencementioning

confidence: 99%

Parents and children: Legal reform to facilitate children's participation.

Melton¹

1999

American Psychologist

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Section: The Misdirected Focus On Competencementioning

confidence: 99%

1998-1999 award winners.

1999

American Psychologist

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He changed the way we look at everyday life. For his innovative approach to methodology: He showed that experiments can be audacious, precise, imaginative, and impactful. For the dynamic clarity of his writing and teaching: He inspired students to love and appreciate social psychology. For his achievements in applying social psychological wisdom to the areas of energy use, AIDS prevention, and prejudice reduction: He improved the lives of countless people. Elliot Aronson's vision of social psychology as a rigorous science in the service of humanity stands as a beacon for generations of scientists to come." BiographyElliot Aronson grew up in the poor, working-class town of Revere, Massachusetts, in the 1930s and 1940s. His was the only Jewish family in a virulently anti-Semitic neighborhood. At dusk, walking home from Hebrew school, he was occasionally roughed up by gangs of tough guys shouting anti-Semitic epithets. One of his earliest vivid memories involves sitting on the curb at age 9, nursing a bloody nose and a split lip, wondering how it was that these kids could hate him so much. They didn't even know him! Were they born hating Jews or did that kind of hatred have to be taught? If they got to know him better, would they like him a little more? If they liked him more, would they hate other Jews less? He didn't realize it at the time, but those were profound social psychological questions.Years later, as an indifferent high school student, Aronson astonished his teachers (and himself) with a very high score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Brandeis University had recently opened its doors and, perhaps because of its newness, took a huge risk by allowing his SAT score to override his poor grades and offering him a work-study scholarship. Without that scholarship, he never would have been able to attend college.Aronson began his college career as an economics major, solely because his father, an uneducated factory worker who had recently died, firmly believed in the value of a college education as a ticket to financial security. That changed one day when Aronson found himself following a pretty young woman into her class, hoping to continue the conversation they'd begun in the coffee shop. The class was Introductory Psychology, and the lecture that day concerned prejudice. Lo and behold, the professor was raising the same questions Aronson had been asking himself as a young boy sitting on the curb. For the first time, he realized that there was an entire science devoted to asking such questions. He switched his major to psychology that same day. The teacher of that class was Abraham Maslow.This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.Receiving an award for a lifetime of scientific dabbling provides me with a powerful impetus (as well as a wonderful excuse) to look over my shoulder, as it were, at some 40 years of my own experiments to ...

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Are Obese Children Abused Children?

Priest¹

2018

Hastings Center Report

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In 2010, a South Carolina mother was taken to court when her fourteen‐year‐old son reached 555 pounds. An article on the story reported, “His mother, Jerri Gray, lost custody of her son and is being charged with criminal neglect. Gray is facing 15 years on two felony counts, the first U.S. felony case involving childhood obesity.” If the caretakers of obese children are negligent, then they are also morally and legally blameworthy. I want to suggest, however, that important ethical differences exist between negligent or abusive caretakers and the caretakers of obese children and that these differences ought to make a moral and legal difference. The distinctions are nuanced, and the ethical pictures in cases of abuse, neglect, and obesity are far from black and white. However, the various types of harm that children face from their caretakers should be placed in neither the same ethical nor the same legal category. When children are beaten or sexually molested, the justification for taking them out of the home is clear: the caretakers are violating the rights of their children. Similarly, with neglect, caretakers are failing to provide their children the necessities to which they are entitled. The central question that I want to address in this article is whether the actions (or inaction) of caretakers that allow a child to become obese are morally or practically analogous to physical abuse or neglect. Ultimately, I will argue that parenting that allows a child to become obese is so morally different from both abuse and neglect that it is best understood as falling outside these categories altogether. This conclusion has important moral, practical, and legal implications.

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Decision Making by Children

Cited by 17 publications

References 32 publications

Parents and children: Legal reform to facilitate children's participation.

Parents and children: Legal reform to facilitate children's participation.

1998-1999 award winners.

Are Obese Children Abused Children?

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