It has been traditionally thought, without controversy, that children lack autonomy. They have not reached the point of

[answerhappygod]

It has been traditionally thought, without controversy, thatchildren lack autonomy. They have not reached the point ofdevelopment as persons, at which they can decide as to who theyfully are and what their life's goals are as rationaldecisionmakers. Of course, even very young children make choicesand such choices could be uncontroversially respected but thechallenge arises when it comes to weighty choices - life and death,developmental choices, etc. Are children capable of properlyautonomous choices, are they autonomous, do they have already therequisite capablities for being autonomous? This has not beencontroversial - children lack the required capacities for autonomy- but, today, there seems to be a thinking that children are indeedprotected in making autonomous choices like, for example, aboutwhat gender they choose to be. Not that there is deep discussionyet; these are cultural trends but you can see clearly how this isdirectly related to our subject, autonomy. Don't be derailed by aproblem of vagueness that is inevitable here, as it happens withmany subjects: at what point EXACTLY should the line for autonomybe drawn? Why at the age of x instead of x-minus-one-month, etc.?There are some philosophical riddles around this but we can ignoreit and look at the big picture.