Of Paternal Power

Locke begins by objecting to the phrase "paternal power" itself — it suggests the authority belongs only to the father, excluding the mother, which is already a mistake. He will use "parental power" instead. This is not pedantry. Filmer's whole argument rested on a patriarchal model in which all authority flowed from the father-king downward. Locke's insistence that the mother shares parental power equally is one small move that collapses the entire Filmerian edifice.

The chapter's central argument is that parental authority is temporary, conditional, and aimed at the child's good — the exact opposite of political authority as Filmer conceived it. Children are not born in a full state of freedom, but they are born to it. They are under parental authority only until reason matures enough for them to understand and follow the law of nature for themselves. The moment they can govern themselves by reason, the parental authority ends and the child enters the natural freedom of all human beings.

From this Locke draws the crucial distinction that will recur throughout the treatise: paternal power is nothing like political power, and the two must not be confused. Political power operates over consenting adults for the protection of their rights; it requires their consent, is limited by their rights, and may be resisted when it exceeds its mandate. Parental power operates over children who cannot yet consent; it is justified by incapacity, aimed at producing the capacity for freedom, and terminates when that aim is achieved. Filmer's fundamental error was treating the second as a model for the first. Chapter 6 is Locke's anatomical dissection of that error.