Recently when I presented the argument that parents have enforceable positive obligations to their children, someone asked whether children have similar obligations to their parents. Do parents have an enforceable claim against their children according to a libertarian legal order?
The short answer is no. Children owe their parents the negative obligation not to initiate aggression against them, just as they owe this to all others. They do not owe their parents any positive obligations, such as the provision of care in their parents' old age.
There are no legitimate unchosen positive obligations. Legitimate obligations only arise as a result of one's actions. One must also accept as "chosen” those obligations that come from the unintended but reasonably foreseeable consequences of one's actions. This responsibility for the consequences of one's actions is the basis of the positive obligations that parents have to their children.
However, a child has not acted in any way that gives rise to positive obligations to his parents. Children are brought into life without action on their part. The actions that created a child were undertaken by his parents. Children do not (and cannot) consent to their relationship with their parents. That relationship is something that is put upon them without agreement. Therefore, there are no grounds for parents to have any claim against their children for positive obligations.
Those that argue children have obligations to their parents must argue that there are legitimate unchosen positive obligations. Here is an example of the argument from Andrew J. Peach:
it is generally acknowledged that relationships and circumstances give rise to obligations that are quite independent of the wishes of the people involved in those relationships and circumstances. For example, children (simply in virtue of being children) have special responsibilities toward their parents, especially during the latter’s twilight years. Children who do not make special allowances for their elderly parents, by providing emotional, financial, or physical support or just being generally solicitous of their well-being, are as unjust as they are ungrateful.
Peach is correct that people can have obligations "independent of [their] wishes", but there is something missing in his account. One cannot acquire positive obligations independent of one's actions. A father who does not wish to have the responsibility of being a parent still has a rightful obligation to his child because of the father's actions. He had sex, which is an act that has the reasonably foreseeable risk of creating a child, even when that was unintended. However, that same man does not have a legitimate obligation towards children that he did not father, since he did not act in any way that would lead to such an obligation.
Peach does not justify the unchosen obligations, he just takes it as given ("generally acknowledged") that they exist. That's because there is no logical basis for justifying such obligations.
I wonder if those who think children have positive obligations to their parents argue that such obligations are enforceable. Should parents be able to use the law to make their children pay for their care in old age? What could possibly be the basis to justify such a claim?
Here's another question: if parents had been negligent or abusive to their children, would the children still owe them obligations? Parents are obliged to look after their kids no matter how badly their kids behave towards them because that obligation results from the parents own actions. But I wonder if those who think that children have an obligation to their parents would also argue that such obligations are independent of how badly the parents treated the kids?
The only answer that makes sense of all this to me is that children do not have positive obligations to their parents. I wrote more about this topic in my response to Harry Browne's letter to his daughter.
Having established that there is no justification for grown children to have an obligation to their parents, what about a child's obligations during childhood? Does a child have an obligation to obey his parents? In some conditions, yes. A parent must sometimes act paternalistically (against the expressed wishes of the child) in order to fulfil his obligations. For example, if a child wants to walk across town in the middle of the night, a parent may justly prevent him from doing so for his own protection. This logically entails that in such cases a child should obey his parents. In this sense, a child does have a positive obligation to his parents. But this is not an enforceable obligation: a libertarian legal system could not enact just laws against children failing to comply with their parents. So a child may have a moral obligation to obey in such cases, but not an enforceable one.
Furthermore, it should be clear that a child does not have any obligation to obey his parents in situations where they are aggressing against him. Any action against the child's consent that cannot be reasonably justified as necessary in fulfilment of parental obligations to remove the child from peril is not something a child has a moral obligation to obey.