Medical care for the child at risk: on state supervention of parental autonomy

To be a child is to be at risk, dependent, and without capacity or authority to decide what is "best" for oneself. To be an adult is to be a risktaker, independent, and with capacity and authority to decide and to do what is "best" for oneself. To be an adult who is a parent is to be presumed in law to have the capacity, authority, and responsibility to determine and to do what is good for one's children. The law is designed to assure for each child an opportunity to meet and master the developmental crises on the way to adulthood-to that critical age when he or she is presumed by the state to be qualified to determine what is "best" for oneself.2 As Jeremy Bentham observed not so long ago in 1840