UPBRINGING RIGHTS: A SHARED DUTY

Abstract

Upbringing rights and duties constitute a set of prerogatives and responsibilities held by parents in relation to their sons and daughters. These rights both empower and oblige parents, first, to ensure their children’s survival, nourishment, and care; and second, to guide and educate them from birth until they reach biopsychosocial maturity, with the aim of guaranteeing their integral development.

Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes the obligation of the Mexican State to ensure the principle of shared parental responsibility, which holds that both parents have common obligations in the upbringing of their children and that the State must provide them with assistance in fulfilling these duties.

This article examines the general and legal concepts of upbringing in order to conceptualize them and, for the first time, proposes a comprehensive framework of these duties. It analyzes their regulation at international, national, and local levels; offers a current overview of child-rearing; reviews the consequences arising from non-compliance or improper exercise of these duties; and proposes corresponding reforms to the legislation of the State of Mexico to ensure adherence to these conventional obligations and guarantee their effective implementation. These proposals are framed within a broader reform of parental relations.