# data[].attributes.headline
how much does government affect people freedoms/ liberty?

# data[].attributes.subject
how much does government affect people freedoms/ liberty?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Public goods, services, and transfers boost living standards, reduce insecurity, improve health, and equalize opportunity. But in the course of achieving these valuable goals, do government programs impinge on freedom, weaken civil society, and reduce happiness?

Critics of modern government often assert that they do. "The state can gravely threaten the space for private life," says Yuval Levin. "It can do so," he explains, "by invading that space and attempting to fill it, and by collapsing that space under the weight of government's sheer size, scope, and cost. Both dangers have grown grave and alarming in our time." Several decades earlier, Milton and Rose Friedman warned of a "major evil" of public social programs: "their effect on the fabric of our society. They weaken the family ... and limit our freedom."

Skip to:

FREEDOM

Because they are funded mainly by taxes, government programs restrict people's ability to do what they wish with their income, and in this sense government plainly does reduce freedom. By how much? Figure 1 shows effective tax rates in the United States for households at various points along the pretax income distribution. An "effective tax rate" is calculated as taxes paid divided by pretax income. Americans with pretax incomes in the bottom fifth pay, on average, about 20% of their income in taxes. Those with incomes in the middle pay about 27%. Those at the top (in the top 1%) pay about 33%. Whether this constitutes a significant curtailment of freedom is in the eye of the beholder.

The more interesting question is whether government impinges on freedom in other respects. Three are of particular interest.

It is sometimes assumed that a government overseeing an expansive and generous set of public social programs will inevitably also wield a heavy regulatory hand, limiting the freedom of firms and workers to make decisions in pursuit of their interests. Figure 2 shows that, among the world's rich longstanding-democratic nations, that assumption is wrong. On the vertical axis is each country's average score for five types of "economic freedom" - the absence of heavy regulation - according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. On the horizontal axis is government spending as a share of GDP. Higher-spending nations don't tend to be heavier regulators.

What about freedom for ordinary individuals? Does a big-taxing and -spending government reduce our ability to pursue the kind of life we wish to lead? The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has assembled a "personal freedom index" that measures legal protection, security, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, freedom of association, assembly, and civil society, freedom of expression, and freedom in relationships. Figure 3 suggests no incompatibility between big government and individual liberty.

An additional source of information about freedom is public opinion surveys. Since 2005 the Gallup World Poll has asked a representative sample of adults in various countries whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with their freedom to choose what they do with their life. The vertical axis in figure 4 shows the share responding "satisfied" in each country. As the figure reveals, citizens in countries with heavier government expenditure totals aren't more likely to see their lives as constrained or limited.

Indeed, government programs often enhance freedom. Anu Partanen's comparison of her native Finland with her adopted country, the United States, highlights this point. Partanen finds that many Americans don't have access to high-quality, affordable health insurance, child care, housing in good school districts, college, and senior care. This, she points out, diminishes not only Americans' security but also their freedom:

"Most people, including myself, assumed that part of what made the United States a great country, and such an exceptional one, was that you could live your life relatively unencumbered by the downside of a traditional, old-fashioned society: dependency on the people you happened to be stuck with. In America you had the liberty to express your individuality and choose your own community. This would allow you to interact with family, neighbors, and fellow citizens on the basis of who you were, rather than on what you were obligated to do or expected to be according to old-fashioned thinking. The longer I lived in America ... the more puzzled I grew. For it was exactly those key benefits of modernity - freedom, personal independence, and opportunity - that seemed, from my outsider's perspective, in a thousand small ways to be surprisingly missing from American life today.... In order to compete and to survive, the Americans I encountered and read about were ... beholden to their spouses, parents, children, colleagues, and bosses in ways that constrained their own liberty."

CIVIL SOCIETY

Another worry about big government is that it will erode or discourage intermediary institutions such as families, voluntary organizations, and perhaps even friendship bonds.

One view about how this plays out is offered by Charles Murray, who links it to happiness:

"Happiness consists of lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole.... Once you start to think through the kinds of accomplishments that lead people to reach old age satisfied with who they have been and what they have done, you will find (...) that the accomplishments you have in mind have three things in common. First, the source of satisfaction involves something important. We can get pleasure from trivial things, but pleasure is different from deep satisfaction. Second, the source of satisfaction has involved effort, probably over an extended period of time. The cliche 'Nothing worth having comes easily' is true. Third, some level of personal responsibility for the outcome is essential....

"When the government intervenes to help, whether in the European welfare state or in America's more diluted version, it not only diminishes our responsibility for the desired outcome, it enfeebles the institutions through which people live satisfying lives. There is no way for clever planners to avoid it. Marriage is a strong and vital institution not because the day-to-day work of raising children and being a good spouse is so much fun, but because the family has responsibility for doing important things that won't get done unless the family does them. Communities are strong and vital not because it's so much fun to respond to our neighbors' needs, but because the community has the responsibility for doing important things that won't get done unless the community does them.... When the government says it will take some of the trouble out of doing the things that families and communities evolved to do, it inevitably takes some of the action away from families and communities....

"Europe has proved that countries with enfeebled family, vocation, community, and faith can still be pleasant places to live. I am delighted when I get a chance to go to Stockholm or Paris. When I get there, the people don't seem to be groaning under the yoke of an oppressive system. On the contrary, there's a lot to like about day-to-day life in the advanced welfare states of western Europe. They are great places to visit. But the view of life that has taken root in those same countries is problematic. It seems to go something like this: The purpose of life is to while away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible, and the purpose of government is to make it as easy as possible to while away the time as pleasantly as possible - the Europe Syndrome.

"Europe's short workweeks and frequent vacations are one symptom of the syndrome. The idea of work as a means of self-actualization has faded. The view of work as a necessary evil, interfering with the higher good of leisure, dominates. To have to go out to look for a job or to have to risk being fired from a job are seen as terrible impositions. The precipitous decline of marriage, far greater in Europe than in the United States, is another symptom. What is the point of a lifetime commitment when the state will act as surrogate spouse when it comes to paying the bills? The decline of fertility to far below replacement is another symptom. Children are seen as a burden that the state must help shoulder, and even then they're a lot of trouble that distract from things that are more fun."

This is a plausible hypothesis (or set of hypotheses). Let's start with family. It's conceivable that by reducing the need to have a partner to help with the breadwinning and childrearing, government services and transfers will cause fewer people to commit to long-term family relationships. But if so, we might expect family to have weakened considerably when universal K-12 schooling (kindergarten, elementary, and secondary) was established, and that didn't happen. Still, perhaps adding paid parental leave, child care, preschool, a child allowance, and other government supports has pushed the big-government countries past the tipping point.

What do the cross-country data tell us? Marriage isn't a helpful indicator here. The institution has fallen out of favor in many western European countries, but that doesn't necessarily mean there are fewer long-term relationships. A better measure is the share of children living in a home with two parents. Figure 5 has this on the vertical axis, with government expenditures as a share of GDP on the horizontal axis. According to this measure, family isn't weaker in countries with bigger governments.

For the United States, we have data going back to the early twentieth century for a comparable measure - the share of children living with both of their biological parents at age 16 (and thus likely throughout their childhood). Figure 6 shows the over-time pattern, along with that for government spending as a share of GDP. Government size increased sharply from the early 1900s until the mid-1960s. Since then it has continued to grow, but at a much slower pace. During the years in which government size was increasing rapidly, the share of children growing up with both parents held steady at about 75%. In the mid-1960s it began to decline, falling to about 55% in the 2010s.

This isn't what we would expect to observe if big government is a major contributor to family decline. It's conceivable that government size reached a tipping point around 1960 or 1965, sending family stability on a downward path thereafter even though there was little additional rise in government expenditures. But it seems unlikely that the United States reached such a tipping point given that many countries with bigger governments have more two-parent households (figure 5).

Have people in big-government countries stopped having kids? According to Murray, expansive and generous public social programs foster a culture in which children are seen as a burden and a distraction from the fun things in life. This too turns out to be wrong, as figure 7 shows. Across the rich democratic countries, there is no association between government size and fertility.

What about participation in voluntary organizations? Yuval Levin contends that "progressive social policy ... has sought to make civil society less essential by assigning to the state many of the roles formerly played by religious congregations, civic associations, fraternal groups, and charities, especially in providing help to the poor." Historically, Americans have been prolific participators. Is that because the United States has fewer and stingier public insurance programs than most other affluent countries? In figure 8 we see a negative association across the rich countries between government spending and the share of adults who say they are an active member of a civic group or organization, but the association is quite weak.

Consider the United States and Sweden, two countries that contrast sharply in the expansiveness and generosity of their public insurance programs. If big government has the effect of quashing or crowding out civic engagement, we ought to observe significantly more participation in civic groups by Americans than by Swedes. The World Values Survey asks about active membership in eight types of groups: religious, sports-recreation, art-music-education, charitable, professional, labor union, environmental, and consumer. Each country has been surveyed three times over the past two decades. It turns out the difference between the two countries is fairly small. When we average across these eight types of groups, 10% of Swedes say they are active members compared to 14% of Americans. And that small difference owes heavily to religious groups, with only 6% of Swedes reporting active membership compared to 36% of Americans.

Robert Putnam has compiled data on membership rates in 32 national chapter-based associations that existed throughout much of the twentieth century in the United States. Figure 9 shows that the era when the size of government expanded most sharply, between 1915 and 1965, was also the heyday of rising civic participation. The subsequent decline of civic engagement occurred during a period when government size increased much more slowly.

Even if modern big government does crowd out some intermediary organizations, it's worth asking whether that is bad. Consider safety and property protection. This can be provided by voluntary intermediary organizations, such as local militias, but it's done more effectively and fairly (because rules ensure that everyone gets access to the service, the accused have rights, and so on) by a government police force. Similarly, voluntary "savings clubs" might help to address the problem of people setting too little aside for retirement, but it's much more effective and efficient to create a government pension program such as Social Security. The point here isn't that public programs are always better. In some instances they are; in others they aren't. The point is that we shouldn't fetishize civic engagement. Less of it isn't necessarily a societal loss.

What about family and groups as a source of social support? Yuval Levin suggests that "As the national government grows more centralized, and takes over the work otherwise performed by mediating institutions - from families and communities to local governments and charities - individuals become increasingly atomized." One measure comes from the Gallup World Poll, which regularly asks "If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?" The comparative pattern, shown in figure 10, suggests no adverse impact of big government.

According to Levin, in the United States "we have set loose a scourge of loneliness and isolation," partly as a consequence of government expansion and its purported impact on civil society. Yet the most thorough look at available data on isolation and loneliness in the US, by Claude Fischer, concludes that neither has in fact increased.

HAPPINESS

In Charles Murray's view, big government tends to reduce happiness. According to the hypothesis, this happens partly via a weakening of families and civil society. As we've just seen, the evidence doesn't support this worry.

Another potential pathway is employment. In European nations with cushy welfare states, says Murray, "the idea of work as a means of self-actualization has faded. The view of work as a necessary evil, interfering with the higher good of leisure, dominates. To have to go out to look for a job or to have to risk being fired from a job are seen as terrible impositions." Here too the data say otherwise. Figure 11 suggests no association between the size of government and the share of the working-age population in paid employment.

So Murray's hypothesized pathways through which big government might reduce happiness - family, civil society, employment - don't pan out in the real world. Is there, however, a direct effect? If government supports and cushions take too much of the struggle out of life, perhaps we'll feel too little sense of accomplishment to be genuinely happy.

The first thing to note here is that where government has made life easier, that usually has been a good thing. Think of protection of life and property, clean water, clean air, sewage and trash removal, roads, parks, and schooling, among many others. Second, technological advance and private enterprise have done as much as government, and probably a good bit more, to take the trouble out of life. Few of us any longer grow or hunt our food, make our clothes, build the house we live in, and so on. Nor do we have to walk or ride a horse to get to work, wash clothes and dishes by hand, or go to a library to get answers to important questions.

Still, it's conceivable that there is a point beyond which happiness might decline because government makes life too easy. Have existing countries reached such a point? Figure 12 suggests they haven't. The average level of life satisfaction tends to be as high in big-government countries, such as the Nordics, as in those with medium-size governments, such as Switzerland and the United States.

SUMMARY

Do the gains from government goods, services, and transfers come at the cost of reduced freedom, weakened civil society, and diminished happiness? The experience of the world's affluent democratic countries suggests that, at least so far, the answer is no.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is big government bad for freedom, civil society, and happiness?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lane Kenworthy, The Good Society November 2017 Public goods, services, and transfers boost living standards, reduce insecurity, improve health, and equalize opportunity.1 But in the course of achieving these valuable goals, do government programs impinge on freedom, weaken civil society, and reduce happiness? Critics of modern government often assert that they do.

# data[].attributes.headline
How much power can one have over their own mind and body

# data[].attributes.subject
How much power can one have over their own mind and body

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Search the internet for "the power of the mind," and you'll find some strange things: a program that promises to show you how to attract success simply by focusing on it, a great many nutritional supplements and a video purporting to show a Shaolin monk breaking things with his head. But beyond the hucksters and the hype, the mind actually can do some remarkable things, including shaping our health and well-being.

"Our minds aren't passive observers, simply perceiving reality as it is. Our minds actually change reality," said Alia Crum, an assistant professor of psychology and director of the Stanford Mind and Body Lab. Crum and other Stanford researchers - including many who recently took part in a World Economic Forum IdeasLab panel and Worldview Stanford's Power of Minds meeting, both sponsored in part by the Stanford Neurosciences Institute - are bridging medicine, psychology, education, business and more to understand not just what our minds can do, but also how they do it.

(Image credit: Jean Beaufort / PublicDomainPictures.net)

Shaping health

Probably the best known way the mind shapes reality is the placebo effect, where people get better if they simply believe they are being treated for a disease. For ages, that was viewed as just an experimental hassle - something to take into account when testing the effectiveness of a new drug, for example.

It's essential to recognize that mindsets are not peripheral, but central to health and behavior.

-Alia Crum

Assistant Professor of Psychology

Yet doctors are starting to rethink placebos not as a hassle but as an actual path to better health. After all, placebo effects and the underlying mindsets and social contexts that create them have real effects on health, from reducing anxiety and blood pressure to easing pain and boosting immune systems.

Crum and colleagues have shown that those effects extend beyond medicine per se. People who believe doing physical work in a job counts as exercise live longer lives, independent of how much exercise they actually get. Likewise, telling people a milkshake they drank was "indulgent" made them feel more full. Telling them a drink they were consuming had caffeine raised their blood pressure.

"It's essential to recognize that mindsets are not peripheral, but central to health and behavior," Crum said. "If we truly want to tackle the diseases and crises of our time, we need to more effectively acknowledge and leverage the power of mindset."

(Image credit: Martin Barraud / Getty Images)

Easing pain

Among the most important health care issues today is chronic pain. Although estimates vary widely, somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of all adults deal with ongoing pain of some kind, making pain more prevalent and costly than heart disease, diabetes and cancer combined, said Beth Darnall, a clinical professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine.

Pain is highly responsive to
each person's psychology and mindset.

-Beth Darnall

Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine

"Pain is highly responsive to each person's psychology and mindset," Darnall said. Those who expect worse pain, ruminate on it and feel helpless about it - what's called pain catastrophizing - feel more intense pain, stay longer in hospitals after surgery and often require more painkillers. On the other hand, those who shift to a positive mindset feel less pain, spend less time in hospitals and require fewer pain medications.

"That presents an opportunity," Darnall said. Over the last decade, she and her team have been working on relatively brief mindset interventions to help people train their brains away from pain, with lasting results. The interventions can help people with chronic pain suffer less, she said, and they can be used before or after surgery to aid in recovery. Darnall and Sean Mackey, the Redlich Professor and professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, recently received $4 million from the National Institutes of Health to study a similar intervention for patients with chronic back pain.

More recently, Darnall and colleagues turned their attention to opioid use.

"Many patients would like to reduce their opioid use but they believe and fear their pain will worsen if they do," Darnall said. But with careful planning and support, she and colleagues showed, many patients could substantially reduce their doses without experiencing any more pain. Darnall is continuing to investigate that approach with help from a $9 million research award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

(Image credit: Vgajic / Getty Images)

Growing smarter

Mindset matters for more than health, of course. How people think about themselves - in particular, whether they think traits like intelligence are malleable - can have a powerful effect on their success in school and beyond.

When people are in more of a growth mindset, they believe their qualities can be developed.

-Carol Dweck

Professor of Psychology

"When people are in a fixed mindset, they believe that their basic qualities - their intelligence, talents, abilities - are just fixed traits," said Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor and a professor of psychology. "But when people are in more of a growth mindset, they believe these qualities can be developed through effort, perseverance, good strategies, lots of great input from others."

That idea has been applied most famously to education, where Dweck and colleagues have shown that children with a growth mindset do better in math and other subjects. But the same basic concepts apply to recovering from romantic breakups and even easing the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Most important, even whether people have a growth mindset is subject to change. In 2015, for example, Dweck and colleagues demonstrated that 45-minute online interventions could raise grades and reduce dropout risk among underperforming high school students.

(Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A sense of belonging

To Gregory Walton, an associate professor of psychology, belonging may be the most interesting mindset. When students question whether they belong in school, especially a school they value, Walton said, their classroom performance and health can suffer.

The most proximate determinant of how people behave is how they understand things, and you can change that.

-Gregory Walton

Associate Professor of Psychology

Part of the reason lies in how students explain setbacks to themselves. If students are already wondering whether they belong and then get criticized, excluded or left behind, it's easy for them to interpret that as proof they don't belong, leading them to withdraw. That exacerbates inequality, Walton said, since the burden of those worries falls most heavily on minority students and students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.

Fortunately, there's something to be done about it: Change the narrative. In 2011, Walton and Geoffrey Cohen, the James G. March Professor in Organizational Studies in Education and Business and a professor of psychology and of education, tested that idea by presenting a series of older students' thoughts about college life to 92 first-year students. Those thoughts conveyed a sense that everyone has difficulty adjusting to college at first and that everyone can succeed.

The exercise lasted just an hour, but it worked. Especially for African American students, grades and even overall health improved throughout their college years - all, Walton said, because they had been given an alternate way to understand the struggles they encounter. Walton, Cohen and colleagues have since shown that even short online programs, designed to show that challenges with belonging are normal and get better with time, can help reduce social inequalities.

"The most proximate determinant of how people behave is how they understand things," Walton said. "And you can change that."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the human mind shapes reality | Stanford News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Search the internet for "the power of the mind," and you'll find some strange things: a program that promises to show you how to attract success simply by focusing on it, a great many nutritional supplements and a video purporting to show a Shaolin monk breaking things with his head.

# data[].attributes.headline
How much do parents control their children's freedoms

# data[].attributes.subject
How much do parents control their children's freedoms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Introduction

All western industrialized countries place some limitations on individual freedom and governments usually devise policies to limit parents' absolute freedom when their actions result in harms to children or youth (Berrick et al., in press). When a child's safety or well-being is seriously compromised, the state can impose certain parental restrictions, assume temporary parental responsibility, or in extreme circumstances and in some countries, it can terminate all parental rights if parents are unable or unwilling to perform their parental commitments. To secure children's safety or their best interests, the state might require parental compliance with services, or place children in foster homes or residential units; or it could allow another family to adopt the child. These laws and practices, along with the offer of voluntary family supports, typically represent some of the essential elements of the child protection (variously called child welfare) system of a given state (Gilbert et al., Reference Gilbert, Parton and Skivenes2011). But institutional frames across countries differ. As an example, some states offer a wider or richer array of primary prevention services, and others may be more reliant on secondary or tertiary intervention (Berrick et al., in press).

These state interventions in family life represent an immensely strong state power. Child protection decisions simultaneously challenge parental freedom and the privacy and autonomy of family life (Shapiro, Reference Shapiro1999). Decisions that result in state intervention, therefore, should - at least to some degree - reflect within-country societal views about children, their safety, and the threshold of risk that can be tolerated. Societal views about children, of course, are always undergoing change. Some behaviors toward children that would have been normatively accepted 100 years ago are no longer appropriate today. Whether these changing perspectives have influenced the development of child protection policy, or whether changes in policy have brought about changes in public attitudes are contested notions (Béland, Reference Béland2010; Brooks and Manza, Reference Brooks and Manza2006). What is known, however, is that child protection is harshly criticised in the mass-media when social workers and judges - as agents and arbiters of the state - make determinations about children's risk that might inappropriately limit parents' freedom, or when they inaccurately underestimate risk and children are harmed (Biesel et al., 2020). Where the public sets its threshold of tolerance for certain parental behaviors, and where the state chooses to intervene may or may not align. In this study, we examine the public's views about acceptable limits on individuals' liberty and if, when, and how governments should intervene in family life. This observational study uses a survey design to test the causal connection between risk level and degree of state restriction, and includes a representative sample of the population (n=2148) in two countries. Our hypotheses are first that increasing risk to a child will be associated with increasing acceptance of restrictions on parents, and second, that we will find differences between institutional contexts. The study has implications for child protection policy design in unique country contexts.

The paper starts with its theoretical platform, followed by an examination of restrictions on parental liberties in California (USA) and Norway relative to child protection policy. We present the methods for the study, followed by findings and a review of the implications of these data for child protection policy.

Theoretical approach - freedom and institutional context

Basic human principles lie at the heart of child protection policy, including values related to the state's relationship to vulnerable families and how children should be raised by their parents. Values relating to care for children are universal (LeVine, Reference LeVine and LeVine1988), but parenting strategies and culturally-based principles can be quite dissimilar in different country contexts (Faircloth et al., Reference Faircloth, Hoffman and Layne2013). Little is known about how the population considers the value of parental freedom in the context of children's safety and risk, yet the design of public child protection systems is fundamentally based on normative values about children's safety and risks, and parental freedom and autonomy. These beliefs are socially constructed, historically bounded, and mutable with time and changing cultural mores. It is not clear from the literature how institutional context with its societal values and beliefs are connected to attitudes about child protection policies (Berrick et al., in press; Parton, Reference Parton2019). This study is rooted in comparative child protection attitudinal research and aims to increase our understanding of the mechanisms and factors that influence views about and acceptance of state intervention policies that protect children's well-being interests and limit parents' liberty interests.

All states place some limitations on individual freedom, but in the field of child protection, the liberty interests of the child to be free from abuse or neglect sometimes compete with the interests of parents to freely care for their child as they would prefer (Holland and Scourfield, Reference Holland and Scourfield2004). Inappropriate infringements on either party's liberty interests raise questions of justice and must therefore be considered carefully. Philosopher John Rawls' ( Reference Rawls1999) theory of justice describes fundamental principles of personal liberty: "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others." (p. 53). Rawls' theory, applied to the field of child protection, would therefore suggest that a parent's liberty interests to care for and/or treat their child as they choose is constrained by the child's rights to liberty. How these competing liberty principles are resolved and where different country contexts set the boundaries of their resolution have not previously been well articulated. The famous anti-paternalist principle of John Stuart Mill states that harm is the only just reason for restricting freedom:

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant'' (Mill, Reference Mill1859, p. 78).

In child protection, harm or risk of harm to a child offers the justification for intervention, though different states may narrowly or broadly define harm to include physical, mental, developmental, or other aspects of well-being.

In political theorist Isaiah Berlin's conceptualization of liberty (Berlin, 1969 [2017]), he suggests that citizens' political relationship to the state may be fundamentally characterized as negative or positive. In child protection, Holland and Scourfield ( Reference Holland and Scourfield2004) show how Berlin's notion of negative liberty applies. Negative liberty refers to the freedom that comes with few external constraints or freedom from government intrusion into family life. In this sense, Berlin's views relating to negative liberty are not notably dissimilar to Mill's libertarian sentiments. A child protection system designed around notions of negative liberty would allow for a wide range of parenting liberties to be expressed absent state intervention to prevent all but extreme behaviors. Positive liberty, on the other hand, refers to the opportunities among individuals to act unfettered, or their freedom to. Berlin introduces the idea of positive liberties thus:

The 'positive' 'sense of the word 'liberty' derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men's (sic), acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside (Berlin, 1969 [2017], p. 178)

In this sense, political structures that enhance opportunities to realize one's hoped-for capacities would be liberatory. Child protection efforts would be oriented around these positive rights if they support parents' capacities to be self-directed and realize their best parenting selves as well as children's life chances,.

In the case of international comparative child protection approaches, the US (and therefore California) child protection system is heavily weighted toward a negative liberty paradigm. Gilbert and associates (Gilbert, Reference Gilbert1997; Gilbert et al., Reference Gilbert, Parton and Skivenes2011) have characterized the US as a child protection system that is risk-oriented, where the state tolerates a relatively high threshold of risk or harm before the liberty interests of the parent are inhibited or restrained. Parents have wide discretion to care for their children unrestrained from the government. By way of illustration, in the 1920s, two important US Supreme Court decisions privileged the rights of parents to make educational decisions for their children in contrast to the state's interest in children's education (see: Meyer v. Nebraska, 1923; Pierce v Society of Sisters, 1925). A number of US Supreme Court cases since then have tested the limits of parental freedom only to repeatedly underscore parents' rights "in matters of family life" as a "fundamental liberty" (see Santosky v Kramer, 1982). Guggenheim has noted several instances when the US Supreme Court has signaled the importance of a parental rights doctrine. In Stanley v. Illinois, the court stated, "the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children" is "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this court." And in Troxel v. Granville, the court indicated parents' rights to raise their children as "essential", and "rights far more precious... than property rights" (Guggenheim, Reference Guggenheim2005: 18). Although the word "parent" is absent from the text of the US Constitution (as is the word "child" or "children"), at least four constitutional amendments undergird the privileges of parental liberty. These include the 1 st, 5 th, 9 th, and 14 th amendments (Skinner and Kohler, Reference Skinner and Kohler2002). In particular, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14 th amendment suggests that tests of the parental liberty principle must be subject to "strict scrutiny" and state efforts to override parental freedom must be "compelling" and must be exercised using the "least restrictive means" (Skinner and Kohler, Reference Skinner and Kohler2002). The Supreme Court has also determined, however, that in certain circumstances, parental freedom is not limitless. On issues pertaining to child labor, vaccination, or school attendance, for example, parental freedom may be constrained. Relevant to child protection, parental liberty may also face limits in circumstances of child endangerment (see Prince v. Massachusetts, 1944).

In contrast to the US, the Norwegian constitution has adopted and incorporated a number of human rights conventions promulgated by the United Nations. These conventions stipulate a range of positive liberties which oblige the state to support and protect individuals. All individuals - including children - have civil, political and social rights. Although parental rights have strong standing and the privacy of the family sphere is protected, compared to the US, the Norwegian system allows for far more state intervention oriented to support positive liberties. According to Gilbert et al. ( Reference Gilbert, Parton and Skivenes2011), Norway's child protection system is characterized as oriented toward a "family support" perspective. With a rich array of supportive services offered universally and voluntarily to all families, and long-lasting, saturated services offered to targeted families, the Norwegian child protection model aspires to Berlin's notion of "positive liberty", where the individual is afforded opportunities to be free to: to be supported to become the ideal-type or at least a better parent.

Just as parents enjoy positive liberties, so too do children in Norway. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was ratified early on and in 2002 was incorporated into all Norwegian legislation. In 2014 the Constitution was amended to include a new article (§104) about children's rights:

Children have the right to respect for their human dignity. They have the right to be heard in questions that concern them, and due weight shall be attached to their views in accordance with their age and development. For actions and decisions that affect children, the best interests of the child shall be a fundamental consideration. Children have the right to protection of their personal integrity.

The authorities of the state shall create conditions that facilitate the child's development, including ensuring that the child is provided with the necessary economic, social and health security, preferably within their own family.

As a result, the state is obliged to protect children's liberty interests co-equally with parents' liberty interests. With this strong child rights orientation, the state has a direct responsibility for protecting the child's interests, shared with the parent's obligation to the child.

The US and Norway, with their distinctive institutional contexts of family policy and child protection, are nested in welfare states that are typically portrayed as quite different from one another (cf. Healy and Oltedal, Reference Healy and Oltedal2010). Esping-Andersen's ( Reference Esping-Andersen1990) welfare state regimes place Norway solidly among the social democratic welfare states, and the US among the liberal welfare states, the former offering a welfare safety net that strongly buffers adults from the uncertainty of the market. The US (and California) has a relatively thin social safety net with few services, where the individual is largely responsible for assuming risks associated with modern capitalism (Hacker, Reference Hacker2019). Perhaps related, the economic conditions of individuals and families in the two countries are notably different. The Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality where higher values represent greater income inequality) in the US is 45 (49 in California) (estimated in 2007) compared to 26.8 (estimated in 2010) in Norway (Index Mundi, 2020). Each of these welfare systems are ideologically distinctive in their approach to social responsibility, social problems and social inequality overall, and the degree to which the state is involved in families' lives.

A review of some of these country context differences is provided in Table 1. These distinctive characteristics make international comparative analyses especially fruitful as they highlight unique policy choices available in response to similar child and family difficulties. Moreover, comparison of Norway and the US (California) is appropriate as these countries share a number of common features. For example, both are highly developed western industrialized nations, and are ranked as high-income countries. Less than 25% of the total population is made up of children (U.S. 22.3%; CA 22%; Norway 23.8 [Statistisk sentralbyra, 2021; U.S. Census, 2021]) and the population growth rate in both countries hovers below 1% (2019 rate: U.S. 0.5%; CA 0.0%; Norway 0.7% [MacroTrends, 2020; World Bank, 2019]). Both countries have a life expectancy that is roughly similar at 82.2 (Norway), 78.7 (U.S.), and 80.8 (California; Arias et al., Reference Arias, Bastian, Xu and Tajada-Vera2021; Statista, 2020). The population of Norway is predominantly white and Norwegian (about 83%) and the large majority of the US population (76.3%) is white, though there is greater racial diversity in California (55.8% white; Index Mundi, 2020; U.S. Census, 2021).

Although the policy contexts differ, there is a knowledge gap regarding how the public views children at risk, the threshold for intrusive intervention, and the degree to which parents' freedom should be restricted. In this study we build upon prior work that examined public attitudes about the provision of state-sponsored services in a situation of low-risk to the child (Berrick et al., Reference Berrick, Dickens, Pösö and Skivenes2020). Here we solicit public attitudes about parental freedom as it relates to child rearing. We use an observational, experimental study to examine three levels of risk to determine the threshold when public attitudes shift. We further examine these public attitudes towards risky child rearing in different country contexts where the child protection policy paradigm notably differs. And we include an analysis of demographic variables to determine whether underlying population dynamics or country context are more prominent in our explanation of outcomes. Specifically, we address two hypotheses. The first focuses on values relating to parental freedom, and the second on institutional context: H1. Citizens will tolerate greater restrictions on parental freedom as a child's risk rises. H2. Norwegians will have greater tolerance for restrictions on parental freedom than residents of California (USA).

Methods

Findings

Findings from this study suggest that our first hypothesis is largely confirmed. As risk to the child rises, the public tolerates greater restrictions on parental freedom (see Table 2 below, and Table A2 in the Appendix). The omnibus ANOVA tests suggest that respondents are less likely to support unrestricted parenting as risk rises (p<.001), and they are more likely to agree with suspended parenting as risk rises (p<.001). Results regarding restricted parenting do not follow the anticipated risk trajectory; as risk rises, respondents are more likely to disagree with restricted parenting (p<.01).

The treatment effect is also valid for the within-country samples with regard to unrestricted parenting and suspended parenting. As risk to the child rises, Norwegians and California respondents are less likely to endorse unrestricted parenting, and more likely to endorse suspended parenting. Norwegians are less likely to agree with restricted parenting as risk rises in this scenario. We did not see differences with regard to restricted parenting in the California sample (see Table 2).

Merging responses "agree or strongly agree" and "disagree or strongly disagree" into binary options, we find that the majority of respondents (75-81%) favoured a restricted parenting approach, across risk groups. Fewer than one in five respondents agreed with a state response that allowed unrestricted parenting. About 20% (19.3%) agreed with unrestricted parental freedom in the low-risk context, followed by 15.3% in the medium risk context, and 12.4% in the high risk context (see Table 3 below as well as Tables A3- A5 in the Appendix). When examining responses in the total sample to our measure of suspended parenting, we see that less than half of respondents agree with a state action that would result in separating the parent and child. About one-third of respondents (34.5%) agreed with separating the parent and child in circumstances of low-risk, about two of five respondents (42.7%) supported parent-child separation under circumstances of medium risk, and in the high-risk situation, almost half (47.9%) of respondents supported suspending parental freedom.

The second hypothesis is also confirmed. There are significant differences between Norwegian and California public attitudes about restricting a parent's freedom. Across all statements and risk levels (except for views about suspended parenting under conditions of medium risk), Norwegians hold more favourable views than Californians about restricting parental freedom (see Table 2 and 3). Regardless of risk, respondents from Norway are less supportive of unrestricted parenting than respondents from California and they are more supportive of restricted parenting. Except for the medium risk scenario, respondents in Norway are clearly less supportive of suspended parenting than residents of California. As risk rises for the baby in this vignette, Californians' support for suspended parenting increases.

We find that less than one in ten Norwegian respondents (8%, 7.4%, and 4.9% depending on risk from low to high), agreed with unrestricted parenting compared to 29.6%, 22%, and 19.8% respectively in California. Over four-fifths of Norwegian respondents (87%-low, 85.1%-medium, and 81.3%-high) agreed that the circumstances warranted restricting Julie's parenting, compared to about three-fourths of California respondents (76%-low, 74.5%-medium, and 68.3%-high). And there was also support for suspended parenting - a measure of placement into foster care. Twenty-eight percent of Norwegians supported suspended parenting in the low-risk situation compared to 42.7% in medium risk, and 40.9% in high risk. In California, 40.3% supported suspended parenting in the low-risk situation compared to 42.7% in medium-risk, and 54.8% in the high-risk circumstance (see Table 3).

Discussion

This study included a representative sample of residents from Norway and California (US) to elicit their views about children at risk and the responsibilities of the state to restrict parenting under conditions of variable risk. By randomly varying the independent variable, the current study extends our capacity to understand how or if child welfare policy contexts are associated with public attitudes, particularly with regard to weighty decisions associated with restrictions on parental freedom.

We have largely confirmed both of our hypotheses. We find a clear treatment effect associated with the severity of risk. As risk rises, there is a commensurate rise in willingness to restrict parental freedom. There is general approval for restricted parenting regardless of severity of risk to the child. Furthermore, we find differences in respondents' views based on institutional context; Norwegian residents are more likely to favor restricting parental liberties compared to residents of California, and California residents are more likely to support unrestricted parenting. One third to more than half of respondents from both groups are willing to suspend parental liberties through foster care, with California respondents viewing foster care more favorably as risk rises. Our findings indicate that age is a mediating factor for institutional context as an explanatory variable, though these findings are difficult to interpret. Older participants in Norway offer responses notably different from other respondents. They are less likely to favor any of the three alternatives (i.e. unrestricted parenting; restricted parenting; suspended parenting). Trust in government might account for this, as one study showed that older respondents have less trust in child protection systems (Juhasz and Skivenes, Reference Juhasz and Skivenes2016). Other authors have examined citizens' attitudes toward the welfare state, in general, and in the context of expanding or contracting welfare states over time (Blekesaune and Quadagno, Reference Blekesaune and Quadagno2003; Laenen et al., Reference Laenen, Meuleman and van Oorschot2020; Svallfors, Reference Svallfors and Svallfors2012). These studies suggest there is wide variability in public attitudes across states and that individual values and personal circumstances play a role in shaping citizens' views. In general, age is not strongly determinative of public attitudes toward the welfare state (Edlund and Svallfors, Reference Edlund, Svallfors, Goerres and Vanhuysse2011; Busemeyer et al., Reference Busemeyer, Goerres and Weschle2009); age-related findings from this study therefore do not fall neatly into the larger welfare state literature.

Mill's harm principle ( Reference Mill1859) - that government can only restrict freedom under conditions of harm to others - may be at play in respondents' attitudes about restricted parenting. The principle is considered a legitimate reason for state intervention in many countries; however, it may have different interpretations depending on individual or societal contexts. Respondents from California who favored unrestricted parenting may have embraced the freedom aspect of Mill's principle more fully and/or assumed a higher harm standard than Norwegian respondents. Notable is the relatively large percentage of California respondents (between 20-30%) who favored unrestricted parenting, regardless of risk. We see this finding as emblematic of the negative liberty perspective offered by Berlin (1969 [2017]), and suggest this as a relatively strong signal regarding the public's views of the parents' rights doctrine that prevails in the US. This finding may also reflect a general skepticism toward government in the US. Findings from other studies indicate that public confidence in the child welfare system is not particularly high; public attitudes about child welfare in the US and the UK, in particular, are more negative than in the Nordic countries (Juhasz and Skivenes, Reference Juhasz and Skivenes2016). Findings regarding Norwegian migrants' more positive views about unrestricted parenting may reflect a cultural view on parenting or suspicions about government intervention. Further study of this issue is warranted.

In contrast to the US, Berlin's principle of positive liberty may have been influential in Norwegian responses. In that regard, when children's health or safety are at risk, restrictions on parental freedom allow government agents to provide children with the goods, skills and abilities necessary to become autonomous adults. Restriction on parents' liberties and a concomittant requirement to engage in services may also reflect a positive liberty approach to enhancing parents' capacities to fully engage in positive parenting practices with their children. Using government as a tool to optimize opportunities and capacities, those who favor parental restrictions may see government services in a positive liberty frame.

Furthermore, responses may have been rooted in a general understanding of the child welfare frame in which citizens live. A large majority recommended restricting parental freedom in the vignette provided, regardless of the parent's compliance or insight. In Norway, respondents' views largely reflect the child protection system available to families. Services, where mother and baby might live together for some time, would likely be available and possibly required. Moreover, the emphasis on child rights in Norway, as an early adopter of the UNCRC, and embedded in the national constitution, might suggest that survey participants would be attuned to children's liberty needs at the expense of some restrictions on parents' freedom.

In the US, studies suggest that substance abuse is often a contributing factor to child maltreatment (US DHHS, 2019; Walsh et al., Reference Walsh, MacMillan and Jamieson2003). Although substance abuse would not necessarily be determinative of child protection involvement, the data suggest it can be an important, related factor. California respondents' views about restricted parenting, less favorable than Norwegian respondents but still high, may signal acknowledgement about the risks associated with substance abuse, particularly for infants. Given the US ethos of individual responsibility (Prager, Reference Prager1994), and the high risk scenario in which the parent did not accept responsibility for the child's safety, this aspect of the case scenario may have influenced respondents' views.

One-third to over one-half of respondents expressed a willingness to separate the baby from the mother - suspended parenting - and California respondents were more likely to favor this option with increased risk to the child. Why are there consistently high proportions of California respondents that approve of suspended parenting when they are otherwise less willing than the Norwegians to restrict parental freedom? Foster care serves as an extreme form of state intervention and as such, these results are surprising in California, given the negative liberty frame of American governance. A possible explanation for these somewhat contradictory results may be that both Berlin's negative liberty principle and Mills' harm principle may be at play and that these ideas are very much in competition with one another in child protection, where Berlin's principle might prevail with regard to parents, but Mills' principle might be taken into account with regard to the child.

Other research indicates that regardless of one's role - as community member, social worker, or judicial actor - and one's country of residence, decisions about parent-child separation are weighty and are typically reserved for serious circumstances (Berrick et al., Reference Berrick, Dickens, Pösö and Skivenes2020). Nevertheless, California respondents may have been reflecting their understanding of typical child protection services. Critics of the US child protection system have long argued that the service system is thin, with few services other than foster care available to respond to children's needs (Roberts, Reference Roberts2009).

Limitations

This study provides new and important insights into the public's views about children, their safety, and the role of the state in protecting children by limiting parental freedom. There are limitations. The vignette only captured views relating to infants and to a particular safety threat, limiting the general empirical value of our findings. The vignette also does not refer to social class or to other characteristics of families that might shape respondents' views. Our operationalization of increasing intrusions, from unrestricted to restricted to suspended parenting, although reflecting the complexity faced in these cases, is not an exact scale. This may have obscured some of our results. Our survey may also hold certain biases to which we are unaware. The sample included in this study is representative of the populations in Norway and in California on a given set of key variables; as in any public opinion poll, however, we cannot check the veracity of respondents' stated views. The data from the US are derived from a California sample. Although the US has been characterized as a liberal welfare state and is thus significantly different from Norway, a large body of research also suggests that there are important regional variations across the US states and that California is more representative of other Western and Pacific states than it is representative of the country as a whole in its politics, personality, and social correlates (Rentfrow et al., Reference Rentfrow, Jokela, Gosling, Stillwell, Kosinski and Potter2013; Woodard, Reference Woodard2012). Nevertheless, California's child protection system is heavily reliant on federal funding and policy guidance, so the inclusion of a single state is nonetheless instructive about the larger federal context. Certain details are also omitted from our analysis of respondents. For example, we included a measure of "employment" to determine whether a respondent was currently participating in the labor market or not. A more fine grained examination of respondent characteristics might include detail about one's type of employment since individuals participating in some employment settings might view child protection responses differently. Lastly, although immigrantion status was found to be a significant mediator of the observed association between country and unrestricted parenting, there were relatively few immigrants in the Norway sample (n=47); thus these findings should be interpreted cautiously.

Conclusion

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments provide the symbolic and legal frame for public policy in the US. Each of these documents identifies specific inalienable rights that the government must protect, including negative liberties such as the right to freedom from government interference. Findings from this study suggest that even under conditions of considerable risk to a child, about one-quarter of the California sample believed that parents should be unfettered in their care for children. In contrast, the Norwegian sample's tolerance for state restrictions on parental liberty is much greater. With a constitutional frame that guarantees children have rights that are equal to those of other citizens, along with a state welfare infrastructure that provides a relatively thick web of protection for citizens, Norwegians are highly unlikely to view parenting through an unrestricted lens. Under conditions of risk, Norwegian residents largely support state involvement in family life.

A majority of respondents in both countries favored restrictions on parental freedom, particularly as risk to the child increased. One restriction presented to respondents was a "supervised setting" in which the parent can care for their infant child safely. In Norway, such settings are generally available, as needed. In the US, by contrast, the bulk of federal child welfare funding (the Title IV-E) is dedicated to covering the cost of care for children who have been separated from their parents; co-resident services are rare. Recent US legislation, the Family First Prevention Services Act (2018), will expand access to federal funding for services to children who are "at risk" of foster care placement, including substance abuse services deemed "promising, supported, or well-supported" by research evidence. Although the kinds of co-residential substance abuse service programs alluded to in this study's vignette are not inexpensive, we anticipate that they will become more widely available and used in the newly emerging Family First policy context. In this regard, US policy will soon be considered more responsive to the values held by the general public, making available services that restrict parental freedom, rather than suspending their freedom altogether.

To the degree that national child protection policies reflect commonly held public values and attitudes (cf. Heimer et al., Reference Heimer, Näsman and Palme2018), these alignments are likely to garner greater public support. The child protection policy context in Norway appears to be largely responsive to public attitudes about limits on parental liberty when children's safety is at stake. Findings from this study also suggest that policy making in the US in the field of child protection may be more difficult because respondents' attitudes are more diverse. Striking an appropriate balance between the liberty interests of parents and children is the fundamental challenge of child protection, regardless of national context.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Parental Freedom in the Context of Risk to the Child: Citizens' Views of Child Protection and the State in the US and Norway | Journal of Social Policy | Cambridge Core

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All western industrialized countries place some limitations on individual freedom and governments usually devise policies to limit parents' absolute freedom when their actions result in harms to children or youth (Berrick et al., in press).

# data[].attributes.body
You can have power without freedom but you cant have freedom without power; Those with power are not often in a position where they can make many undocumented moves which can be viewed as a lack of freedom in their life.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Acknowledge and declare your ambition. ...

2. Replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations. ...

3. Advocate for yourself and others. ...

4. Ask for help when you need it. ...

5. Speak up and share your opinions and ideas. ...

6. Acknowledge your fears.

# data[].attributes.headline
how much power does the administration have over the choices students make?

# data[].attributes.subject
how much power does the administration have over the choices students make?

# data[].attributes.body
Some may say you can be free without power but in response, you need a degree of power to even live, to control your life, if you have no power in any form like obviously money you can't be free.

# data[].attributes.body
When I asked the question, how much power des one have over their own mind and body. I was shown that many people view the world as if their powerless against it. this proves that without power, one cant be free.

# data[].attributes.headline
How do social standards affect peoples freedom/ liberty?

# data[].attributes.subject
How do social standards affect peoples freedom/ liberty?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Society enables us to order our perceptions, and it allows us to make sense of the world at large. Our most basic processes of rationalization, communication, and interaction are molded by society and behavioral fine tuning. Aristotle contended that, as a political animal, man could not exist without society, that without it he would cease to be human.[i] However, even with society so deeply tied to who we are as people we recognize freedom as a departure from these ties and celebrate its principle.

Freedom, for most of us, means an independence from the operations of mass society and the pressures it instills. Freedom is the state of being aware of one's own place in the world, taking responsibility for it, and deciding for one's self how best to act: striving for authenticity. This ability to act authentically may be accessible to different people in different degrees. However, it is widely accepted that, as humans, we all have some ability to act authentically. If this is true, it stands to reason that freedom exists on more than one level and can be experienced in different degrees. In any event, we accept that freedom is real. Society, then, has only provided us with a set of tools; society is not the essence of human existence in and of itself. We can, and we often do, wish to live without its influence.

When we accept that human beings are more than dependent parts of a giant sociological body, necessary and important questions arise. If so much of our consciousness is ordered by society at large, where and how does freedom exist? Where does personal freedom begin? How is freedom related to free will? We must recognize and answer these questions in our own lives before we can claim to be free; if we cannot explain to ourselves our personal freedom lies, then we cannot be sure that it exists at all.

Before going any further, we must make a distinction between "freedom" and "free will." Freedom, for the purposes of this article, is defined, described and examined as a state of consciousness, a state of mind.

The term "free will" is a broader and more denotative concept dealing with the connections that occur in relating consciousness to action. Ultimately, "freedom" plays a role in influencing action through exercising "free will." However, this article will not include an extensive analysis of "free will."

Free will is the conscious undertaking of a decision, but freedom is the state of mind that drives the actions of free will. For the time being, our references to freedom are references to a state of conscious awareness only.

The dictates of human society reach only so far into human consciousness. With this, a necessary question arises: where do these dictates end? Or, in other words, just how far do they actually reach? The process of socialization begins at birth. We begin to learn the structures of family, we learn to recognize cues and patterns. Eventually we learn to predict specific occurrences. If our expectations are not affirmed, we begin to ask why, and if we are resourceful we try to find answers as to why this is the case. When we reach this stage, we have begun to acquire what is known as common sense. At some point, we begin also to develop a vocabulary, which becomes an integral part of our capacities for complex reasoning. By this time in early childhood, we have already been exposed to an incalculable number of external influences and lessons both from society and the world at large. These lessons and influences have begun shaping who we are and who we are to become.

While we are developing as individuals, we are also unconsciously developing personal locations with the framework of society. In his book, Invitation to Sociology, Peter L. Berger describes the dynamic of a person's "location" as one that sees him or her completely surrounded by the influences of society, which are present on levels ranging from families to local communities to mass society.

If we return once more to the picture of an individual located at the center of a set of concentric circles, each one representing a system of social control, we can understand a little better that location in society means to locate oneself with regard to many forces that constrain and coerce one.[ii]

Ironically, the same system that is responsible for the great many forces working to "constrain and coerce" us has also given us the tools we need to reject these forces or mitigate their effects on us. When we turn to self-reflection and begin to realize where society has influenced and continues to influence our lives, we begin to know where its jurisdiction ends. The dictates of society in human consciousness end where we are able to reflect on our inner selves, and recognize the dictates for what they are: external influences.

This consciousness of self that we may develop as individuals in freeing ourselves is a virtual no-man's land. It is the space existing between blind irrational adherence to invisible forces and true freedom. To recognize the influences that society has over oneself is to also recognize a part of oneself that is beyond his immediate reach. When an individual does this, he has become aware of the location of his self, but this is not the same as having actually acquired freedom.

In fact, freedom is not a permanent state of consciousness. It is not acquired at all but rather accessed by the individual who knows its location. Its location is what concerns us at this point; since we have determined where the dictates of society end, we can move on to the next of our necessary questions: where does personal freedom begin?

Personal freedom begins with a recognition followed by a conscious act of withdrawal. An individual first recognizes the controls society has over him. He then proceeds to withdraw from these controls through a process of detachments - the individual going through this process may still go through the motions of everyday life appearing to any onlooker as though no revelation or recognition had ever come to him, but he withdraws as a matter of necessity and choice; he is aware of what he is doing and why he is doing it. On the subject of detachment Peter Berger wrote:

The person who retires from the social stage into religious, intellectual of artistic domains of his own making still, of course, carries into this self-imposed exile the language, identity and store of knowledge that he initially achieved at the hands of society.[iii]

It is true that we cannot suddenly, through some act of will, forget the things we have learned throughout our lives, but freedom does not require us to do so. The level of detachment Berger describes is harsh, but it is a necessary step on the path to freedom.

Freedom results when one no longer agrees to blindly participate in the consciousness that society has prescribed for him. In its most unadulterated form, freedom is the ability of a conscious psyche to decide for itself how to process the information it receives from society and life experience. To acquire access to self-awareness and freedom of like this is a great achievement for any human being. Most of us have neither the time nor the wherewithal to come anywhere actively cultivate a sense of freedom within us. This is why it is important to recognize that freedom is accessible and achievable in varying degrees.

For most of us, freedom involves a more uncomfortable resignation than we are likely willing to admit. We see that society has been able to construct extremely useful systems and protective shields. We may decide that some stones are better left unturned, and any degree of freedom we have acquired consequently becomes a tool for dealing with relatively mundane affairs; not everyone who has accessed a bit of freedom spends his time probing the dark and distant corners of a world that exists in a place beyond ordinary definition, rather some their sense of freedom just to occasionally relax.

It seems paradoxical that something that has exerted so much control over our lives and defined aspects of our lives in so many ways can be cast aside (at least to some extent) with such relative ease. What is even more amazing than the fact that freedom is a somewhat easily accessed state of consciousness is mankind's general disregard for its value. The fact so many people seem more willing to trudge down a mindless path to a wholly inevitable end without experiencing freedom in its truest forms is disappointing.

What we have determined is that the dictates of society in human consciousness extend only so far as they cannot be recognized; when we are able to understand the hidden forces that influence us, we have discovered a new type of self-awareness. After having this discovery, if conditions are adequate, an individual begins the process of accessing freedom. Freedom does not negate social interaction, social consciousness or social dependency. It only supposes a type of keen awareness, a knowledge of the fact that we are the products of our membership in society in an almost total sense, knowledge that we can actively strive towards freedom, and that we accept responsibility for the ourselves and how we choose to live.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Personal Freedom and the Dictates of Society

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Society enables us to order our perceptions, and it allows us to make sense of the world at large. Our most basic processes of rationalization, communication, and interaction are molded by society and behavioral fine tuning.

# data[].attributes.body
Berrick, Jill D., et al. “Parental Freedom in the Context of Risk to the Child: Citizens’ Views of Child Protection and the State in the US and Norway.” Journal of Social Policy, pp. 1–22, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-social-policy/article/parental-freedom-in-the-context-of-risk-to-the-child-citizens-views-of-child-protection-and-the-state-in-the-us-and-norway/9B27C29DC30DEEEBCEDD7CEA2F077D31, 10.1017/S0047279421001021. Accessed 9 June 2022.

# data[].attributes.body
“Is Big Government Bad for Freedom, Civil Society, and Happiness?” Lane Kenworthy, 3 May 2017, lanekenworthy.net/is-big-government-bad-for-freedom-civil-society-and-happiness/#freedom. Accessed 9 June 2022.

# data[].attributes.body
“Personal Freedom and the Dictates of Society | Thomas Jefferson School of Law.” Www.tjsl.edu, www.tjsl.edu/the-jeffersonian/news/2013/04/personal-freedom-and-dictates-society.

# data[].attributes.body
“Teacher Power.” Calstatela.edu, 2019, web.calstatela.edu/faculty/jshindl/cm/Teacherpower.htm.

# data[].attributes.body
University, Stanford. “How the Human Mind Shapes Reality | Stanford News.” Stanford News, Stanford University, 13 June 2018, news.stanford.edu/2018/06/11/four-ways-human-mind-shapes-reality/.