Ethical Issues Involving Children

ETHICS
Ethics can be defined as a set of moral principles and rules of conduct. Ethics help a man to take proper and meaningful decisions in the course of his life. Ethics is the study of right and wrong, good and evil; morality and immorality, what we ought and ought not to do. Ethics is a method where we categorize our values and the way we follow them.
Do we pursue our own happiness or do we sacrifice ourselves to a greater cause? Is the foundation of ethics based on the bible or on the nature of man himself or neither?
Ethics is a requirement for human life. It’s our means of deciding a course of action.

INTRODUCTION

Children have unique ethical characteristics as they are the only class of people who may be discriminated. Minors have

This includes criminal acts. Children may also end up in the care of the government through no fault of their own through parental death, family break-down, or even abandonment.
Children have been subject to corporal punishment. However, this is now outlawed in educational establishments in India.
As potential future citizens children are normally obliged to attend educational establishments. This impacts corporate behavior in our country where employment of children can restrict or prevent access to education.
Children’s lack of experience means that they can be easily influenced by advertising, which can for example persuade them to consume excessive amounts of snack foods or sweets which are bad for their health.
This is of growing societal concern given the epidemic of child obesity in the India. Children are inherently economically weak. Their lack of employment skills such as job experience and low physical strength means that their opportunities to earn money are limited.
In agricultural communities children are expected to work without pay at harvest time. This might be within an individual family struggling to survive as subsistence farmers, but it could also be ‘bonded’ labor, where children are essentially sold as