Rights-Based Parental Becoming

Sor Juana's entire life was a claim that women's rights to education, intellectual life, and autonomous thought were not privileges to earn but rights to assert. She framed these not as luxuries competing with duty but as fundamental human entitlements. A rights-based approach to parental identity shifts the conversation from 'How much should I give up?' to 'What do I have a right to maintain?' Parents have a right to adequate sleep, to intellectual stimulation, to bodily autonomy, to privacy, to say no. These are not negotiable trade-offs to be managed; they are baseline human rights. A parent who grounds their becoming in rights rather than sacrifice approaches parental identity differently: not as a role requiring self-annihilation but as a relationship requiring a whole person. This framework empowers parents to resist guilt when they exercise these rights and to recognize that children benefit from parents who maintain their own humanity. Sor Juana's example shows that asserting rights is not selfish; it is the only ethical foundation for genuine love and presence.