Parental Rights Legal Issues

Parental power is the collection of the rights and obligations based on parentage in order to raise and protect parents' minor children.The institution of parental power is an important part of the legal system of modern civil law, regulating the relationship between parents and their children.Due to the defects of China's present legal system, many disputes between parents and their children have taken place in practice, particularly in those aspects relating to minor children's privacy right, property right and personal right.In this paper, by analyzing the reasons of these disputes, and learning from the regulations in the legal systems of other countries and regions, the author analyses the China's legislation defects and shortages concerning parenthood, focusing on the conflicts between parental power and minor children's rights as above, and puts forward several specific institutional improvement proposals, so as to fully protect legitimate rights and interests of minor children, and to protect parents' legitimate exercise of their parental powers.This paper consists of four chapters:In the first chapter, the author introduces basic theories of the institution of parental power, including the origin, the evolutionary process, the contents and the nature of parental power, then gives a briefing on China's institutions and problems related to parental power.In the second chapter, the privacy of minor children is described. The author relates the basic concepts and the scope of the right to privacy and the privacy of minor children, analyses the manifestations and reasons of current conflicts between minors' privacy and parental power in China, and at last, puts forward co-ordination rules resolving conflicts between parental power and minor children's privacy, including establishing the institution of parental power in the legal system, clearly prohibiting parents from typical violations of their minor children's privacy in "the Law on the Protection of Minors" and other related laws, as well as clearly providing the principles of coordinating conflicts of the two kinds of right in the legislation.The third chapter concerns minors' property rights. First of all, two typical cases lead to typical cases and related issues involving minors' property rights in practice. This is followed by a brief introduction of the development history of minors' property rights as well as the significance of giving minors property rights, and a definition of the scope of minors' property rights. Then the author analyses parents' rights and duties on their minor children's properties, and the effect of parents' disposition of their minor children's properties. Finally, the author analyses China's current legal system of protecting minors' property rights, points out the defects of current legislations, puts forward his own legislative proposals, and gives analysis to the two cited cases with the views in this chapter.The forth chapter concerns minor children's personal rights. First of all, the author analyses three concepts related to minor children's personal rights: the right to discipline, the right to protection and education, the right to punishment. This is followed by a brief introduction of the right to discipline of representative counties and regions of two legal families. Then the author analyses the reasons of parents' invasion into their minor children's personal rights: social history, parents their own, and the defects of current legal system. Finally, through the debate whether the right to punishment should be into the law, the author puts forward legislative proposals on protection of the minors' personal rights.