We give parents considerable leeway in the raising of their children. Some choose not to vaccinate, some choose to home school, all choose in what religious faith, if any, to raise the child, and they choose where to live. The downside of leeway is that parents are fallible, they make mistakes.
Let’s try a thought experiment. If your parents made bad economic decisions, did the government step in and make your family whole financially? Short answer: no. You had to live with the reduced circumstances a lack of money normally results in.
If your parents don’t vaccinate you and you sicken and die from something preventable, do we try them for murder? We don’t.
If your father was a felon, and spent many years in prison, did the government somehow magically make you something other than the poor child of a criminal? It’s likely the answer in all these cases was no, the government wasn’t responsible for repairing your parents’ mistakes.
Suppose your parents took you to a foreign country when you were small and stayed there even though they were not legally entitled to do so. The whole time you were there all members of your family were criminals, violators of that country’s laws.
Is it that government’s responsibility to ignore your crime and take care of you forever? I argue the answer is also no, the government isn’t responsible for repairing your parents’ mistakes. You are the victim of your parents’ lawbreaking, the guilt is theirs, it is not society’s guilt.
