Autonomy In Childhood Worldview Development

Some kinds of autonomy will likely be instilled in children after a period of guidance or education, such as autonomy in performing everyday tasks of practicality like cooking.  This type of autonomy may even be built up over many years.  Sound parental suggestion is particularly helpful in such cases, as the specifics of cooking a given meal are not self-evident whatsoever.  However, reason is self-evident, and looking to parents as epistemological authorities (or anyone else) is contrary to reason in that reason grounds knowledge, not the words of other people.  This does not mean parents have no responsibilities when it comes to the philosophical development of their sons and daughters; it means they play an optional, unecessary, supporting role at most.

Parents fail to live rationally if they tolerate or ignore any irrational ideas their kids embrace.  At the same time, a child is the one actually at fault for embracing or not giving up fallacious ideas whether or not they were pushed in the right direction by their parents.  No matter how apathetic or irrational their parents were, there is never an excuse for not personally constructing an accurate worldview based on reason; parental circumstances do not make reason itself more or less accessible.  Children are not incapable of utilizing reason without inconsistencies and assumptions, and adults can seldom boast a sound worldview.  Even a young boy or girl is not automatically forced to accept an irrational concept as if it is true no matter what their parents say--or do not say.

Complaining about how a "lack of parenting" is supposedly responsible for the stupidity of certain teenagers or young adults is merely an invalid reaction.  Yes, parents are guilty of neglecting an integral aspect of their children's lives if they have no interest in at least observing where they are at and pointing them in the right direction if a child truly seems unwilling to do so on their own, but an individual person cannot be exempted from their own intellectual development when everyone can access reason to at least whatever extent is needed to understand logical axioms and their own existence, even if they never directly reflect on them.  Parents and their kids simply have different responsibilities in a child's worldview development.

Indeed, it is a child's role in their own development that is more vital, foundational, necessary, and direct than anything a parent could possibly manage.  Someone can disregard their parents' influence or ignore it altogether, but no one can escape their own mind.  As such, everyone can dissect concepts and experiences directly without looking to their parents for a great deal of philosophical matters.  No child needs to wait for the prompting of their parents!  Fathers and mothers do not therefore have a monopoly on developing the worldviews of their sons and daughters, and any other way would be less personal, secure, and oriented towards pure reason as it is.