ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the ideas about the position of children in the family that flourished after the 1960s, before going on to assess their continued relevance in the twenty-first century, when there are unprecedented legislative protections for children. Undoubtedly, children are biologically reliant upon adults for a time. Raising children within the nuclear family represented a Herculean task that pushed parents to breaking point. The harming of children is only one, albeit extreme, form of family disharmony. The revolutionary socialist Tony Cliff sought to encourage independence and free-thinking in his children by allowing them to decide if and when to join the Socialist Workers Party (SWP UK) of which he was a leading member. Moreover, there is a wide spectrum when it comes to children and how receptive they are to parents' views, at one end of which is full acceptance and at the other total rejection: most kids sit somewhere in between.
