"He is still a child" cannot be a reason for exemption

In recent years, public sentiment has been quite tangled about how to treat "children from other families". On the one hand, with the increasingly comprehensive legal protection, the public's "zero tolerance" attitude towards acts against minors has become more and more obvious. On the other hand, the disputes caused by minors' unrestrained temper tantrums in public places have also caused waves of public opinion. For the life stage that everyone will experience, why does it condense such feelings of "love and hate"?

From the perspective of functionalism, children are not only the continuation of husband and wife's lives, but also the reproduction of social relations. The experience of "being young and weak" has the root of rational choice. When minors inevitably produce costs and losses in the process of learning to behave, that is, socialization, they should be shared by the society. The participants in social exchanges transferred their personal interests, such as peace and property, to the minors who met by chance, which is the symbol of the normal functioning of the community and the embodiment of good social customs.

There are limits to the preference for minors. Our laws do not stipulate that the third party has the obligation to tolerate minors. Even special laws such as the Juvenile Protection Law do not require universal rights derogation. The kind concessions made by social members on a voluntary basis cannot be understood as the implicit bearing of the growth costs of minors. Everyone has the right to ask others to respect their own needs for order and cherish their rights, regardless of whether "others" are adults or not. The balance of interests between claims and immature self-control is realized by the legal guardianship system. In this sense, the guardianship system is not only a protection mechanism that enables minors to participate in social interaction, but also a liability guarantee mechanism. It responds to the question: how to find an appropriate position in the subjective fault based liability system for people who cannot correctly understand the meaning of their behavior and can not control themselves? After the introduction of guardians, the thorny problem of the imbalance between strength and weakness gradually receded, and the rule world between equal subjects returned. "He is still a child" is not a reason for exemption, and the rights of the third party need not be avoided naturally.

The crux of "Bear Child"'s anxiety is not whether the child is good or not, but the social distribution of growth costs. Children today are not necessarily more naughty than they used to be. However, under the influence of factors such as increased social mobility and changes in parenting concepts, minors now have more opportunities for social activities, which puts forward higher expectations for performing parental duties. When the closed characteristics of some public facilities make it impossible to quit at will, if the guardians fail to properly perform their duties, they may generate forced transfer of growth costs to a third person in the form of disturbing the peace and even damaging property. It can also be seen from the past hot events that how parents discipline their children, especially whether they avoid and prevaricate, is often the key factor in intensifying conflicts. The reaction of the third person shooting minors is emotional catharsis, and more importantly, criticism and feedback on parents' performance and absence. Therefore, the pursuit of internalization of growth costs is still a logical answer to how to cool down the "bear child" problem.

Of course, it is difficult for families to digest the high growth costs alone. From the perspective of providing social support for children's upbringing, in addition to strengthening management and setting up special areas, we can consider giving hints in public places where minors are frequently used, introducing contractual obligations that tolerate minor negligence, so as to create opportunities for the breeding of new consensus.

Su Hang, Political Department of Haidian District People's Court of Beijing Municipality

Prepared by our reporter Zhang Xuehong

key word: naughty kid Third party He's still a kid Guardianship system Emotional catharsis