Parental Spying Issues - Essay Example

The idea of spying may not always be viewed favorably but it can sometimes do us good, especially with parental spying. Parental spying by definition is the act where our parents exercise close supervision upon us. This is the act where they check how we are doing in school, if we ate right, if we studied well, who we go out with, are okay, did we eat well, etc.

Parental spying used to be called merely good parenting or close parental supervision but the advent of big government brought the term “parental spying” as an alternative to parental supervision. And because of the usage of the term “parental spying”, parental supervision was suddenly perceived as unethical where it may be deemed improper for parents to check on the activities of their children.

This is aggravated by the fact that there are quarters in society who argue that children should be left on their own and that their private spaces should be respected without the presence of parents. As a result, children who are recipients of this idea complain that their parents are intruding too much and that they no longer have their private space. Parents in turn became oblivious to how to deal with this new idea that it is unethical to check on their children as society perceives it to be.

Looking at it however under the strict scrutiny and standard of morals (what is right and wrong), parental spying is not unethical and has an ethical and philosophical basis that it is carried out in the interest of the greater good and that it does not violate the moral rights of other. Anyone who is well versed based on ethics will agree with the use of these standards in determining that it is indeed ethical to check on one’s children.

The ethical and philosophical basis of parental spying can be derived from the philosophy of utilitarian ethics as espoused by the prominent 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill. The notion of having children closely monitored or spied upon on the basis that it is in the interest of the greater good and does not violate the moral rights of others has ethical and philosophical grounds. We can glean from John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethics which is the “creed which accepts the foundation of morals, utility or the greatest happiness principles holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Oregon State University) which in this case the interest of greater good. It may even surprise people that Mill is also an advocate of personal liberty and limited government authority but will readily compromise personal liberty, especially of children for the greater good of society.

If one asks how parental spying serves the greater good, we can put forth the idea that raising children to become good and responsible adults is in the interest of the greater good.  Children are our future and it is only fitting that we should do everything at our disposal to guide them so that they will not go astray. If children go astray or did not realize their potential or did not even become better, we can only imagine how our future society would become. If we let them astray and become criminals or despondent, then our society will be reduced to or slide back towards barbarism and crudity in the future. It is therefore in our best interest to prepare our children well for the future and the best way to do that is to exercise parental spying to make sure they are properly guided. Consider the opposite of parental spying which is the absentee parent where the child is left entirely on his or her own. They leave children at a tender age when their faculty to decide what is right and wrong to decide for themselves or left them alone. As a result, children go astray. They became vulnerable to undesirable influences at an early age because they cannot discern what is good and bad for them which parents should have done for them.