Deciding What's Best for Children

Policy-makers want what is "best" for children, and they adopt programs, laws and regulations in its pursuit. The advocates who lobby policy-makers on behalf of various schemes argue that they will help children flourish, and they spend a great deal of time and money to persuade legislators and bureaucrats to agree with them. These claims are often in conflict. Nevertheless, policy-makers tend to take them seriously; indeed, they often see it as their core responsibility to decide which of the competing advocates is right. This, however, can put the cart before the horse. Often the first question should not be "what is best for this class of children?" but instead "who should decide what is best?" Put differently, when confronted with a problem concerning the well-being of children, the policy-maker should initially ask: "Is this a problem I should try to solve by legislating the best answer for every child with this problem, or is the identification of the 'best' something that I should assign, leave, or delegate to someone else to determine?" There are times when policymakers can sensibly conclude that the decision as to what is best even for individual children is properly their own; in that event they should act to promote the specific answer they conclude is correct. But most often their appropriate function in the end is to allocate power and responsibility among others to determine what is best. That is the central point of this article. We realize, of course, that many policies promoted in the name of the best interest of children are actually intended to serve other interests and purposes; decision-makers have many reasons to vote for or to oppose a measure besides the reasons