ABSTRACT
Traditionally in our society, as in most if not all others, children are viewed as the property of their parents, who are invested with rights seen as necessary to carry out their duties. However, during the course of this century we have begun to witness a fundamental change in attitudes towards parent/ child relationships. First has been a growing recognition that parents’ rights over their children are not inviolable, and that the state has a right to intervene to protect children’s interests. Our legislation marks those changes. Until the divorce law reforms in the 1970s, decisions about children were based on the guilt or otherwise of the parent: the guilty partner lost custody regardless of the impact on the child. Now, however, the welfare of the child must be the paramount consideration in decisions taken by the court under the Children Act 1989. We have also seen the growing recognition that parents are capable of harming and abusing their children. This knowledge is now so commonplace it is difficult to comprehend the shock of the Maria Colwell case when it first hit the headlines, shattering comfortable assumptions about the nature of family life. It is now clearly accepted that children have a right to be protected from such harm and that the state has a responsibility to intervene to provide that protection. The other major change has been the recognition that parents do not have sole responsibility for their children. The state is now acknowledged to have a key role to play in supporting parents. The introduction of universal child benefits and fulltime education from the age of 5, free health care and, in particular, the provision for children of regular developmental health checks, the school health service, dental and optical care, all attest to a level of concern current in our society for the general well-being and protection of our children. Whether that level of concern goes far enough is a matter for political debate which I will not pursue here. But the central point is that we do have a broad consensus that neither the rights nor the responsibilities of parenthood are total or absolute although there are fundamental differences of opinion about where the lines should be drawn.
