Raising queer children and children of queer parents: Children’s political agency,human rights and Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘parental responsibility'

Abstract

This article starts from Arendt’s (1959) concept of ‘parental responsibility’ expressed in ‘Reflections on Little Rock’, where the author questioned whether children should be made part of adults’ political fights. Whilst pertinent to the school de-segregation movement for black children in the US in 1950s, Arendt’s provocations are applied here to navigate the tensions between the right to self-determination of the child, the child’s best interests, and parents’ desire to raise their children as they wish in relation to children’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity. The article suggests that a new radical engagement with the notion of ‘children’s political agency’ and a re-articulation of the concept of ‘the best interests of the child’ are required in order to enhance the right of the child to sexual and gender self-determination.