Children are special

We're a bit crazy when it comes to children. As a society, our usual morals and concerns are cast aside, along with rationality. I can understand that if we base morality on empathy, and we all care for our children to an extreme extent (because it's a biological imperative), we will decide that children are special.
But I think that's an awful basis for morality, and it leads to some shocking conclusions.
Firstly, if children are special because we empathise with their parents, are orphans not special? Secondly, a person remains the child of his parents after becoming an adult. Should that adult remain special until his parents die, at which point he too loses moral value?

Do we value children because of their innocence? An innocence that has been proven to be a relatively recent societal myth, and can be disproven by talking to any child who was ever bullied at school, who will happily inform you (or unhappily, if the memories are vivid) that children are evil and vicious and need to be taught to behave themselves. I could return to the theme of perceived innocence being more valuable than attained goodness and wax lyrical about that too (just think of all those news stories about converts to a cause whose past actions have been dug up and found not to match the cause: a basic ad hominem argument), but I won't.

We clearly do value children. When presented with theoretical situations involving saving some lives but not others, people aspire to save the children in preference to adults; it's a standard statement to acknowledge the importance of children. And yet why would we value them more? Do we value potential, as we do for the potentiality of a foetus or a sperm? Do we value what is really there: the marriages, the decades of powerful friendships, the network of dependency, including possible other children? We don't even consider the investment made in an adult: the years of love, affection, education, food and energy. No, we ignore everything and value the child.

What about the right to have a child? Do we consider the cost to the world of supporting yet another mouth to feed when the human demand is already greater than it can bear? Do we care about the cost to the taxpayer of more education, healthcare and benefits? The burden on infrastructure that a larger population will create? No, because it is everyone's inalienable right to help destroy the planet. I know that having children is a biological imperative, but come on people! It's an instinct for me to compete to be alpha male and fight with everyone who annoys me or gets in my way, but you know what? This thing called a brain allows me to choose to be civilised.
It doesn't matter if having children is your life's dream, and that the parent-child bond is a special thing. There are plenty of people out there who dream of eating a full meal every day, or earning enough money to buy medical treatment, or, in this country, being fantastically wealthy and famous. There are people who dream of enjoying the 'sacred' bond of a fantastic relationship but are never fulfilled.
Should we declare it an inalienable right to be fantastically wealthy and have a relationship with Keira Knightley? Obviously having children is a bit easier (as every religious extremist who hates abortions laments, wishing people would try abstinence). But it's a strange new moral principle that says that easier things are more moral. It's easy to give in to temptation.

We make much of children as people of worth, and yet at the same time we treat them as pets. I can see a case for either position, but not both together. Parents coddle their children, forbidding them from going out alone, driving them everywhere, doing all the housework and buying them endless gifts. Children are treated like pets: as things to be looked after and spoilt, not taught or brought up. I've chosen those words carefully: spoilt really does contrast with bringing up. Adolescence is an invented part of life that did not exist 150 years ago. Children grew up to be adults, sadly mostly at that time through necessity. We do need to educate people for longer nowadays, but that shouldn't fool us into thinking that children should or must remain childish.

I knew a girl who swore that if she ever had a child she'd make a huge fuss of it, buy it lots of toys and so on. I was shocked (especially as at the time we were seeing each other, and these could well have been my children she was thinking of ruining). Children need to be treated like humans as much as possible, and the essential aspect of human dignity, in my opinion, is to have one's will and independence acknowledged. Given the prevalence of stories of rebellious teenagers asserting their own individuality, I might not be the only one. Thankfully I was spared that need for such teenage antics by having a wise mother who always encouraged independence (although occasionally wished she were able to do otherwise).
It's a strange ideal to have: to love another human and yet to ignore and deny their basic humanity. If I were to talk to any but the most pathetic, romantic woman, none would want to pamper a husband in the same way, despite being encouraged by some parts of our culture to do so. And yet the bond between two (only ever two) partners, despite being regarded as the height of human fulfillment, is very different from the supposedly great and wonderful bond between parent and child.
Even religions agree with me. God, in His wisdom, gives humans the freedom to make their own mistakes and choose their own actions, because human dignity (as I describe it: He probably wouldn't limit it to humans) is a greater gift than anything else. If God is setting the example with His children, surely we might think to try to imitate Him with ours?

I don't think that children deserve special status at all. In so far as they are human, they are of precisely equal moral worth as the rest of us (barring crime). God made us all equal. We are all sentient (I like to think: sometimes I doubt it). But if we don't think that children are responsible individuals; if we think that they get worth as pets and objects of affection of their parents, then they are of less worth than a sentient, free-willed being. They are then comparable with property.
I'd prefer to go for the 'children are independent humans' route as much as possible. But if we want to make children special, then that only serves to denigrate the value of people the world over who I think deserve lives and rights as much.