ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how concepts of rights were originally based on values of rationality, independence and freedom. Since these characteristics are identified with adulthood rather than with childhood, they contribute to common assumptions that children should be denied civil rights; instead the child’s need for protection is usually emphasized. As Gerison Lansdown has argued in this volume, civil rights can conflict with protection rights, especially when the person concerned is perceived to be immature. Civil or participation rights will be taken here to include rights to have information, to exercise autonomy and choice, and rights to physical and mental integrity. Gerison Lansdown’s point about tensions between inherent, inevitable vulnerability in children and structural vulnerabilities imposed on them through social beliefs will be further considered in this chapter. The tensions will be discussed in relation to recent cases about children’s rights to have access to medical information and to share in decisions about their health treatment. The impact on research of current beliefs about childhood is considered, with the need for researchers to examine their own values when researching children’s rights.
