Short answer. Yes. The Family Code lists imposing discipline among the rights and duties of parents over their unemancipated children. The right is not open-ended: the text ties it to what the circumstances require, and it sits in the same list as the duties to protect the child and provide for their upbringing.
What the law says
To impose discipline on them as may be required under the circumstances
Family Code, Article 220 — Rights and Duties of Parents Over the Child. Read the full provision →
The qualifier is part of the right
The clause does not say parents may impose discipline. It says they may impose discipline as may be required under the circumstances. That phrase is not decoration. It measures the right against the situation that calls for it, which means the same act may be within the right in one context and outside it in another. A right defined by what the circumstances require is, by its own terms, a bounded one — it does not authorise whatever a parent decides is warranted.
It appears in a list of rights and duties together
Article 220 does not separate what parents may do from what they must do. It sets out the following rights and duties as one list, and discipline sits in it alongside the obligation to support, educate and instruct the child by right precept and good example, to give love and affection, advice and counsel, and to protect the child from bad company and from habits detrimental to health, studies and morals. Reading the discipline clause apart from that company misses how the article frames it.
Who holds the right
The article opens with the parents and those exercising parental authority, and applies to their unemancipated children or wards. So it is not confined to biological parents living with the child; it follows the exercise of parental authority. It also has an endpoint. Once a child is emancipated, the article no longer supplies its rights and duties, because it addresses the relationship only while parental authority subsists.
Other law sets outer limits
This article is the source of the right, not the whole of the law that bears on it. Separate child-protection legislation defines conduct that is unlawful regardless of the relationship between the parties, and nothing in this article displaces it. The honest way to read the clause is that it recognises parental discipline as a legitimate part of parental authority while leaving the outer boundary to be fixed elsewhere. This is general information, not advice on any particular situation.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Sps. Melchor and Yolanda Dorao vs. Sps. BBB and CCC, By Themselves and as Natural Guardians of Their Minor Daughter Aaa, G.R. No. 235737, April 26, 2023 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Rosanna L. Tan-Andal vs. Mario Victor M. Andal, G.R. No. 196359, May 11, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Jeffrey M. Calma vs. Mari Kris Santos-Calma, G.R. No. 242070, August 24, 2020 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Caravan Travel and Tours International, Inc. vs. Ermilinda R. Abejar, G.R. No. 170631, February 10, 2016 — read the decision on LawPhil →