ABSTRACT
The basic concepts of ‘parental rights’ and the ‘interests of the child’ have gone through evolutionary changes. Until the nineteenth century, the parental rights issue was relatively simple. Under Roman and early English law, the term ‘parent’ referred to the biological (i.e., genetic) father, and children were treated as property of their parents, particularly the father. Because wealth and property was considered an extremely important matter, the rights of inheritance were carefully protected and rigorously addressed in the legal system. This created an extreme imbalance between the rights of the parents and those of their offspring.
