garysher wrote:

Utter nonsense.

In the first place a teenager who has a child will have to rely on her parents for financial support and most other forms of support she will need. To pretend that her parents are somehow out of the picture and instantly uninvolved is ludicrous.

of course, i never said that.

but to say that the grandparents are somehow going to be MORE affected than the mother is rubbish.

Secondly, parents DO have the right to impose judgment on their children, good or bad, and they do so every day of the child's life, often continuing long after the child becomes a legal adult.

parents also have the responsibility to raise children who can make their own decisions and accept responsibility for them.

also, i believe i illustrated earlier that there are many instances where parents do not have the right to impose their judgement on their children, even if under the age of consent.

Parents make decisions - about health, nutrition, moral values, behaviour, education and hundreds of other things - on behalf of their children. All of these decisions impose judgments on the child in one way or another.

and parents can make bad decisions. or decisions that the child has good grounds to disagree with. at the very least, children deserve to be heard.

your concerns are perhaps more relevant when dealing with very young children, but when dealing with adolescents, it is important to remember that they have their own ideas that cannot be automatically disregarded.

It's clear your parenting experience is confined to the theoretical.

my kids would say otherwise.

actually, they might not!