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.No one is radically independent or autono-mous a feature of personhood that may be readily recognized in childrenand the elderly but is by no means limited to them.And so the good life forhuman persons can only be realized in community.The goods and goals thatwe seek are not purely our own but rather draw us out of ourselves to pursuethe goods and goals of others as well.With regard to children, practices of parenting bear witness to our ability toput another s needs before our own (though these needs are never mutuallyexclusive) and to invest time, energy, and valuable resources in the service ofa child s interests and goals.Writ large, public resources devoted to children seducation, health care, and recreation though often disproportionatelydistributed among children provide a similar witness.The challenge froma Christian perspective on the common good is to expand the circle of soli-darity beyond the children in our own homes and neighborhoods.Gaudiumet Spes was especially prescient about the increasing globalization of humaninterdependence and the need for a globalization of solidarity.23This element of the common good also calls us to recognize and value theways in which children themselves can and should pursue communal goals,beginning in the family but also extending outward in the neighborhood,school, church community, and so on, to the global sphere.At this end of thespectrum we might think of young people s involvement in the environmen-tal movement as an example of connecting to the  bigger picture. A culturethat is surprised by the likes of Craig Kielburger and Iqbal Masih, that frameschildhood in terms of self-involvement, freedom from responsibility, andgrowth through competition fails to do justice to children and may excludethem from pursuit of the common good in the name of more shallow formsof protection and participation.And so, while the language of the common good resonates with humanrights rhetoric especially in its assertion that human persons can make claims Children and the Common Good 91on the community and its institutions to create the conditions for flourish-ing, it nuances this claim with its insistence on the interplay between rightsand responsibilities.Rights, responsibilities, and relationships grounded injustice and human solidarity are constitutive elements of flourishing and soare constitutive of children s flourishing as well.The emphasis on mutual re-sponsibilities within Catholic social teaching resonates with the contributionsof people s whose cultures are traditionally more communal.For example,as African states, concerned about the individualistic tendencies in Westernsocieties, deliberated about the texture of human rights for children in theircultural contexts in the  African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of theChild, they included an entire section on children s responsibilities.24Children have a claim on the resources that are the fruit of God s creationas well as those that are the fruits of our common endeavor.The economicrights they claim include adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, accessto health care.They also then have a claim to participation in the building upof those goods for their families and communities.This is an expression ofchildren s intrinsic human dignity and response to the claims of solidarity.David Tolfree points to a difficulty in defining  participation as it regardschildren.In his study of child worker organizations he notes,  it can be usedsimply to imply children s involvement or taking part in something withoutany implication of the exercise of influence, responsibility or power. 25 Wecan think of numerous instances of such participation in our schools andhouses of worship in which children take part in programs designed by adultsand often serve adult interests.26Another way of thinking about participation involves having a role inplanning, prioritizing, decision making, and execution of those decisions.Adanger as we think about children s participation in the economy is that theymay participate in ways that undermine well-being: our working examplesare exploitative child labor and the child consumer.That children s partici-pation is often marred by exploitation is a mark of human sinfulness that isboth personal and social it is not a sign that children s participation is itselfproblematic [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]