Short answer. It is the natural right and duty of parents over the person and property of their unemancipated children. The Family Code describes it as caring for and rearing them for civic consciousness and efficiency, and for the development of their moral, mental and physical character and well-being.
What the law says
parental authority and responsibility shall include the caring for and rearing them for civic consciousness and efficiency and the development of their moral, mental and physical character and well-being
Family Code, Article 209 — Nature of Parental Authority. Read the full provision →
A right and a duty in the same breath
Article 209 of the Family Code defines parental authority as arising pursuant to the natural right and duty of parents over the person and property of their unemancipated children. The pairing is the point. Philippine law does not treat parental authority as a bundle of powers a parent holds for their own benefit; it is exercised for the child, and the same provision that grants it states the purpose it must serve. That is why the authority can be suspended or terminated where it is abused — a power held on those terms can be withdrawn when it is used against them.
It covers the child's person and the child's property
The article extends to both the person and property of the child. Over the person, parental authority includes custody, upbringing, discipline within lawful bounds, decisions about schooling and health, and representation of the child. Over property, it makes the parents the child's legal administrators, which matters whenever a minor inherits, receives a donation, or is awarded damages. Property in a minor's name is not the parents' to spend, and significant dealings with it generally require judicial approval — a point families discover late, usually when a title cannot be transferred.
It ends at emancipation, and can end sooner
The authority runs over unemancipated children, so it ends when the child attains the age of majority. Before that, the Code provides for its suspension or termination in defined situations, and for it to pass to substitute holders such as grandparents where the parents are absent or unfit. Parental authority is also not something parents may simply hand over by agreement; transfers happen through the routes the Code recognises. If a dispute has arisen about who may decide for a child, the question is which of those routes has actually been taken.
What Article 209 itself does not spell out
The article states the purpose parental authority must serve — civic consciousness and efficiency and the child's moral, mental and physical character and well-being — but it does not itself set out a mechanism for resolving disagreement between parents about how that purpose is pursued, nor does it list what happens when a parent exercises the authority in a way that undermines rather than serves it. Those consequences are addressed elsewhere in the Code; this article establishes the standard the authority is measured against, not the remedy for falling short of it.
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.
- People of the Philippines vs. David Silvano Hayag, G.R. No. 127356, June 29, 1999 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Family Code, Article 209 — Nature of Parental Authority
- Family Code, Article 211 — Joint Exercise of Parental Authority