ABSTRACT
There are feminist accounts of most legal territories now, but, strikingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, there is no feminist analysis as such of child law. Feminists have looked at child abuse,1 at children’s rights2 and at institutions like adoption,3 and some principles of child law have been scrutinised – Helen Reece’s critical examination of the paramountcy principle is an outstanding example.4 But none of this is surprising, for there are obvious takes on ‘abuse’ and on ‘rights’, and the ways in which paramountcy may have undermined the interests of parents, perhaps to the particular detriment of mothers (or at least some mothers),5 is worthy of deconstruction. This, then, is unsurprising. But we lack a feminist account of child law, in the way that we now have an account (or accounts) of contract law,6 labour law,7
the law of property,8 tort law,9 international law,10 etc.11 Why has the discipline of child law escaped feminist scrutiny? The subject is, of course, relatively new – indeed, of about the same vintage as feminist legal literature – but this cannot explain why it has been overlooked. Have feminists avoided exploring the area because the issues are too obvious? Or because, already marginalised, they wished to avoid an obvious legal ghetto? Or because they can translate the issues into broader concerns (patriarchy, mothering, marriage and family law generally) or narrower ones (child abuse and children’s rights)? Whatever the explanation, it cannot be because the subject is not intrinsically interesting, for it has both a rhetoric and a silence with enormous potential for feminist mining (and, need it be said, undermining).
