CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

What Children Really Need: Another Way to Look at Children’s Rights
Allan Carlson, The Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society
Presented at the World Family Policy Forum 2001

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted as an international treaty in 1989, enjoys ratification by most nations on earth; the United States is the one notable exception. As the UNICEF web site explains, this convention “spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere . . . have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural, and social life. . . .The Convention protects children’s rights by setting standards in healthcare, education and legal, civil, and social services.”

The architects of this convention hoped to protect children from exploitation in armed conflicts, from the abuses of child labor, and from sexual exploitation. These are worthy goals. They also wanted to reduce the disparities within societies, such as the gap often seen between urban and rural health systems. Again, this is a worthy goal.

All the same, prominent legal scholars have raised strong criticisms of the convention. Some point to passages, such as Article 13, which appear to undermine the ability of parents to protect their children from harmful outside influences. Others see language that threatens cultural diversity and religious liberty. Still others worry about the very nature of “rights” when applied to children—seeing this as implicitly granting excessive power over the young to governments relative to parents and other kin.

It is not my purpose this morning to weigh and evaluate these arguments. Instead, I want to take a few minutes and—as an American management consultant might say—”think outside the box” about what children really need. Twenty-six years ago, I began work on my doctoral dissertation, which examined the origins of family and population policies in Sweden during the 1920s and 1930s. In the years since, I have given almost exclusive attention to two questions: 1) What modern movements, forces, and developments threaten families and children? 2) How can we strengthen families and protect children in our time?

My pursuit for answers has led me into research and writing that cuts across the academic disciplines into sociology, psychology, the biological sciences, medicine, child development, and history. One project, initiated fourteen years ago, was collecting and abstracting (for average readers) scholarly journal articles on child and family questions. These abstracts now number nearly two thousand entries in a fully searchable database, and they tell us a great deal about the real needs of children.

From this work comes my special problem. For when I read the convention and the Rights of the Child, I find it inadequate—not so much wrong, as poorly focused. It contains many fine sentiments and worthy ideas, but it misses larger truths about children and their needs. Too often, I think, the convention inappropriately presses adult issues and adult language onto children’s unique circumstances.

And so, I want to engage today in a small fantasy. I will assume that I have been asked by the nations of the world to draft a new and more appropriate Charter of Rights for children. It is to be called “What Children Really Need,” and it is to reflect the freshest and most compelling new research on this question. After much consideration, I have settled on Ten Articles:

Article I: Each Child Has the Right to a Mother
Article II: Each Child Has the Right to a Father
Article III: Each Child Has the Right to a Home Built on Marriage
Article IV: Each Child Has the Right to Siblings
Article V: Each Child Has the Right to Ancestors
Article VI: Each Child Has the Right to a Posterity
Article VII: Each Child Has the Right to Religious Faith
Article VIII: Each Child Has the Right to Live in a Healthy Community
Article IX: Each Child Shall Have a Right to Innocence
Article X: Each Child Has the Right to a Tradition

To read the entire document, click here

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