ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ideological debates over children in each country because, choices about children's rights and welfare are moral choices rather than merely the reflection or legitimations of state capacities and interests. For simplicity, people label the points offering a view of working children as agents of their own development and of social change; as victims of exploitation by adults and the world market; and as symptoms of family poverty and the uneven development of the world economy. A perspective on child labor as symptomatic of the family economy under conditions of poverty offers little hope for change without an end to scarcity. The debate to define international norms of activity for children is unresolved today in part because the participants in the debate use different criteria for evaluating policies. Children's rights were first introduced under the belief that parental authority could not protect children from the predations of the new poverty and the growing market for their labor.
