著者

広井 多鶴子

出版者

日本教育政策学会

雑誌

日本教育政策学会年報 (ISSN:24241474)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.152-168, 1994-06-25 (Released:2017-12-29)

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In the early years of the Meiji era there was no legal concept of parental rights. It was considered that the responsibility for children's education should be borne by the head of the household. The Meiji Civil Code of 1898 was the first legal provision in Japan to specify the rights and duties of parents. According to the commonly accepted theories concerning family law, under the Civil Code the patriarchal and feudalistic family system was taken as the norm, and the rights of parents were limited and controlled by those of the head of the household. However, if we look at the legislative process under the Meiji Civil Code, we find that the assertion that heads of households had significant rights concerning education must be rejected. Instead, there is very considerable support for the view that education must be left to parents since it is they who have a "natural" love for their children. At the same time, the right of parents to educate their children was more frequently thought of as a duty than as a right, a duty moreover not to the state but to the children. In the modern family, parents are thought of as having parental rights and duties with the protection of their children's interests in mind, and in this sense one can say that the rights of parents under the Civil Code were based on the concept of the modern family with its roots in ties of love and affection rather than on any feudalistic concept. Children have come to be seen as having to obey their parents in order to protect the interests of the parents. However, the Civil Code put parents under an obligation to protect their children's rights, because children were seen as immature and lacking full capability. The code also incorporated into the legal system for the first time a role for the state in supervising the conduct of parents. The modern understanding of parental rights as being in the interests of children implied systematization in the public interest of the role of the state in supervising parents.