Parental Responsibility Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Parental Responsibility - Essay Example The Children Act of 1989 provides for guidelines as to the responsibilities, rights and duties that parents have over and to their children. Parental responsibility refers these duties, in the context of family and in the spirit of ensuring that the child is taken care of. It also helps in outlining how certain situations can and should be handled in cases where the difference sources of authorities may be in disagreement or where there is a disagreement between the child and the parent. In the United Kingdom, the majority age is 18. This means that before this age, there is always a need to make sure that the parent can protect them. Responsibilities come with rights and vice versa (Hendrick, 2011). One of the historic issues with regard to the parental responsibility is the Gillick case where Mrs. Gillick had sued to stop doctors from prescribing contraception and offering contraction advice to people below the age of sixteen. After a long battle that ended in the House of Lords, G illick lost because the house of lord voted in favor of giving people under sixteen the choice when it comes to such issues. However, this was to be done within the Gillick competence guidelines that would be use to determine when a teenager can decide regardless of the parent’s decision, when to take such treatment. The issue of Gillick covers the problems of the fact that although there are some age limits that are kept to define who is an adult and who is a child, people mature at very different rates regardless of the chronological