Student: Elaine Beal
Study: Women, Children & Social Policy
The United States has various laws in place that are meant to protect children. Over time many laws are improved or made more specific in order to address the often complicated and various situations that deal with children’s rights’. However there are children all over this world, it is in my opinion that they too should have the same humane rights as any other child on this planet. There are many cultures and social standards that modify from towns, cities and countries as well. How a child is valued differs from place to place.
As of today in the United States, a child has the same rights as any adult. Even the parent must respect the child. It was not always so, activism, education and general social views have changed in the United States, which have been beneficial to children. Minimum working ages were not established in the U.S. until 1836. In 1842 states begin limiting children’s workdays. The National Child Labor Committee was formed in 1904, but it wasn’t until 1938 that federal law established minimum ages of employment. It is clear that the rights of children legally, have evolved in the United States.
Within the last century, the idea that children need safeguards and protection separate from those of adults greatly impacted both domestic and international law. Although the children’s right movement have roots as early as the eighteenth century. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that children were viewed as more than a labor hand or economic value. What began as an effort to protect children from long hours of labor and its corresponding health defects turned into an organized and influential movement.
Over twenty years after the 1989 UN General Assembly vote to open the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) for signature and ratification by UN member states, the United States remains one of only two UN members not to have ratified it. The...
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