Contemporary children’s rights issues in early childhood

Childhood can be seen as socially constructed, across time, geographies, and contexts. Young children have been particularly constructed, at least in the Global North, as vulnerable, dependent, innocent, and incompetent, and thus increasingly deserving of protection, provision, and investment in the early years. This construction has been substantially supported by child development, with its extensive history of research attention to young children, including infants. In turn, this construction has been challenged by the arguments that have emerged in recent debates: i.e., that children are (also) social actors, express their agency, and have human rights. The social constructions, as argued in this Chapter, are not just academic insights; they have very real policy and practice implications for young children.

This Chapter considers three contemporary issues, which are illuminated by considering how young children and early childhood are socially constructed, and provide insights to their rights. First, the chapter explores young children’s participation rights and how they can be restricted or enhanced by intergenerational relations and power. Second, the chapter considers the pervasiveness of young children’s construction as ‘vulnerable’ and dependent, which has led both to policy and practice investment in early years but has not always focused attention on how young children are made situationally vulnerable. Third, the chapter discusses the challenge of decolonial and anti-racist thought in early childhood studies and the construction of children as co-creators of more just futures. The chapter concludes by considering the learning from young children and early childhood studies for the wider fields of childhood studies, children’s right studies, and human rights: about the need to bring in relationality to rights, while ensuring respect for children’s human dignity; the questioning of vulnerability as being useful or unique to children, and the challenge of considering the universal vulnerability of everyone; and the fundamental unsettling of Global North assumptions by considering anti-racism and decolonization.