Deficiencies And Improvement Of Guardianship System Of Minor Children

Along with the deepening of the reform of China’s economic system and thedevelopment of modernization process, a large number of rural surplus labor forcesserve as migrant workers in cities. However, restricted by dual urban and ruralsystems of social structure, educational system and economic level, a majority ofmigrant workers choose to leave their children at home and entrust their relatives orfriends as guardians of their minor children, which thus gives rise to the special groupof stay-at-home children. As a special group of minor children, stay-at-home childrencannot have their rights such as right of subsistence, right of development, and rightto receive education protected due to the lack of statutory guardianship and theunsounded entrusted guardianship. Meanwhile, the absence of guardianship is alsothe root clause for the infringement on legitimate rights and interests of stay-at-homechildren in the aspects such as individual and property. Thus, the guardianship ofstay-at-home children is the most core content among all problems of stay-at-homechildren.At present, arrays of China’s scholars have made an investigation on theproblems of stay-at-home children from the aspects of psychology, pedagogy, andsociology, with little focus on the protection of their rights from legal perspective.Despite a series of laws and regulations about the subsistence, development andprotection of minor children, China hasn’t enacted related laws and regulations forstay-at-home children, who are in the category of minor children. There are manyreasons for the absence of guardianship of stay-at-home children, with the deficientguardianship system of minor children as an important one from the perspective ofChina’s civil legislation. Therefore, this paper considers that it is necessary to startwith the guardianship system of minor children to address the problem about theguardianship absence of stay-at-home children. Meanwhile, through studyingguardianship system of minor children, guardian’s responsibilities to stay-at-homechildren as well as the guardianship responsibilities of the State, society, schools andother related institutes are supposed to be defined. This can strengthen the guardianship responsibilities of statutory guardian, improve entrusted guardianshipsystem, and construct national guardianship system, which will then improve andprotect the reasonable guardianship interests and rights of rural stay-at-home children.