ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the historical origins of the ideal of childhood, to trace its global export and examines its impact, especially on the children of the poor. The prime aim of the treaty was to protect and nurture childhood rather than to encourage equality for children with adults, in that while it purported to work in the best interests of the child, these interests were identified entirely by adults. Also, child welfare was identified with that of the family and no allowance was made for the possibility of conflict within the family. The discontinuity between the protective ideologies of child welfare embodied in both international rights legislation and national policy and the socio-economic and cultural realities of countless children in the South is marked. In this respect, the move to set global standards for childhood and common policies for child welfare may be far from the enlightened step anticipated by its proponents.