Children's Rights

In November 1989 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, heralding the arrival of a new era in the development of children's rights. Using the Convention as a framework, this volume re-evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of approaching issues of children's welfare and well-being through the lens of a "rights" approach. The authors take a fresh look at these issues, with specific reference to an international treaty that is certain to be ratified by a very large number of countries in every region of the world and which will soon be legally binding in many states. The contributors are Tom Campbell, Onora O'Neill, Michael Freeman, Ngaire Naffine, Margaret Coady, Tony Coady, Sheila McLean, Frances Olsen, and John Eekelaar.

This edition provides information on topics including the impact of British legislation on children's rights in key areas such as education, social and welfare services and criminal justice, and the provisions of the UN Convention and Human Rights Act.

Given the complexity of modern society, public decision-makers necessarily depend upon outside advocacy to frame issues, present alternatives, and provide information for decision. But who provides that advocacy on behalf of children in a society whose public institutions are dominated by highly-paid lobbyists organized around short-term profit-oriented stakes in public policy?

This study examines the legal discrimination suffered in the United States by children born out of wedlock. The authors analyze the Supreme Court's equal protection birth status decisions from 1968 to 1992 and, in a case-by-case analysis, trace the development of the Court's rulings, examine the pattern of equal protection tests utilized, and evaluate the consistency of the Court's position. In addition, the work examines the related discrimination suffered by the families of non-marital children, especially single parents and alternative family units, and concludes that it is impossible to gain full equality for children born out of wedlock unless equality is also gained for their family unit. Toward these ends, the authors suggest a feminist jurisprudence as a methodology for addressing the underlying issue at the crux of birth status distinctions.

The human right to survive and develop, a fundamental premise of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, can be attained only if adequate living conditions are secured for the child. In this book, an international, interdisciplinary group of distinguished authors discuss issues affecting families, communities, and governments as they seek to secure "the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social development."

Given the complexity of modern society, public decision-makers necessarily depend upon outside advocacy to frame issues, present alternatives, and provide information for decision. But who provides that advocacy on behalf of children in a society whose public institutions are dominated by highly-paid lobbyists organized around short-term profit-oriented stakes in public policy?

The family has become a political battleground in eastern and western Europe. In both areas, the State seems to have moved away from interventionist policies to a fresh quest for individual freedom from interference. This process of rolling back the influence of the State has been dubbed "privatization" of the family, and its consequences are examined here in considerable detail by a group of experts. In the West, inequality of economic power is now determining decisions such as whether or if at all to seek divorce or abortion in situations where previously the State regulated these decisions by offering economic support. In the East, State withdrawal from the family seems to be accompanied by a new emphasis on fundamental religious roles, which tend to stress differences between gender roles and to limit access to divorce or abortion in order to strengthen the traditional family. The authors of this book examine this evolutionary process of the privatization of the family sphere and the role of law in the family to question the value of the exaggerated collectivism of the former communist regimes.

A comparative examination of childrearing practices on the kibbutz and in the nuclear family.

As the term "family values" achieves prominence in the rhetoric of political debate, the social issues at the heart of today's political controversies deserve to be studied in depth. This volume brings together a group of philosophers, political scientists, and legal scholars to explore a wide range of specific topics dealing with the legal, ethical, and political dimensions of familial relationships.

Topics addressed include the rights of unwed fathers, the nature of children's autonomy, children's rights to divorce their parents, parental rights with respect to medical treatment and religious education of children, surrogate parenting, same-sex parenting, and single-parent families. Collectively, the essays point out that many contemporary issues pertaining to the having and raising of children pose genuinely hard choices for public policy makers, for those who make and enforce the laws, and for citizens who would like to engage in informed and critical democratic debate on these issues.