Peter N. Stearns
Because key aspects of the modern idea of rights of any sort, childrenâs included, originated in the West, a historical overview focuses disproportionately on this one society, at least until the increase in global contacts, from the later nineteenth century, began gradually to promote consideration in other regions. This does not mean that other societies did not develop relevant ideas about protecting children. There was, for example, an interest in Islamic law. But it was the West that first generated a fuller statement of rights and this continues to affect and complicate the rights idea more generally. It is also worth noting that, as the first society to industrialize, the West for several decades faced some specific problems concerning children that contributed to debates over rights. The more fully global history of childrenâs rights nevertheless has a rich if somewhat briefer history, including disagreements over the relevance of any Western model. While several histories of human rights exist, often explaining the Western origins, their attention to childrenâs rights has typically been limited. This reflects some special complexities in defining rights for children, as well as the more gradual emergence of childrenâs rights ideas of any sort, beyond a few brief, pioneering references (Hunt, 2008).
Before Human Rights
Prior to efforts to define human rights, including childrenâs rights among them, many agricultural societies developed certain protections for children that offered precedents for more explicit formulations later on. Laws, religious prescriptions, and community norms devoted some attention to children, from the earliest civilizations into modern times.
Law Codes
The dominant framework of agricultural societies was hardly conducive, however, even to informal notions of childrenâs rights. Childrenâs main responsibility, often from a fairly young age, was work, usually within the context of the family economy. The primacy of parental authority was taken for granted, and there was no systematic concept of any separate sphere for children. Very young children might be free from many restrictionsâthis was the case in traditional Japan, for example, where the very young were seen as especially close to the gods. But by the ages five to seven, a more restrictive reality set in, with strong emphasis on childrenâs obligations (Colon & Colon, 2001; Stearns, 2011).
Early law codes and religious writings enshrined this approach for the most part. Mesopotamian and Jewish law alike specified the rights of fathers to punish disobedient sons. In Jewish law, this could include execution. From Deuteronomy: Parents could identify a disobedient son: âThis our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice . . . And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.â Courts of law in early Chinese civilization routinely supported parents against their children: âwhen a father or mother prosecutes a son, the authorities will acquiesce without question or trialâ (Ebrey, 1991, p. 146).
Many law codes touched on children in other ways. Several stipulated that children born of slaves would themselves be slaves, though some (for example, Roman law) noted also that where one parent was free the child would be born free. Many codes sought to regulate inheritance, and this could establish the rights of some children over others. Islamic law, for example, protected inheritance for both males and females, but gave larger shares to males. In medieval Europe primogeniture widely predominated, whereby the eldest male received the entire landed estate. In many cases, however, legal opportunities for disinheritance gave parents a strong weapon to command the continued obedience of their children, even into early adulthood.
Protective Measures
The attention commonly given to parental authority, and the lack of frequent positive references to children in agricultural societies, supported a key initial debate in the history of childhood, around the work of Philippe Ariès. Ariès argued that Western civilization lacked a concept of childhood until the eighteenth century, that children were either ignored or treated simply as adults. Subsequent historical work has substantially modified that contention, among other things because Western and other societies did in fact develop a number of measures protecting children in some circumstances (Ariès, 1996).
For example, while infanticide was widely practiced in many agricultural societies as a means of controlling family size (with girls the most common victims), over time many agricultural societies sought to ban the practice. Chinese imperial law officially outlawed infanticide save in cases of deformity, though in reality enforcement was spotty. Buddhism disapproved of infanticide, and Christian codes were even more explicit. The Quran explicitly banned the practice. There were no references to rights in these cases, but these protections for a childâs life were among the first instances in which political or religious authorities sought to intervene against arbitrary parental behavior (Boswell, 1984).
Apprenticeship provided another venue in which, at least in principle, agricultural societies might intervene moderately on a childâs behalf. Craft apprenticeships date back to early civilizations, as in Mesopotamia and Egypt, with skilled artisans enjoined to provide appropriate training. Written agreements, between the artisans and the childâs parentsâor the youth himselfâoften sealed the deal. These agreements stipulated some basic features of the arrangement, such as pay and upkeep, as well as stipulating the length of service. The contracts were not always honored, and they rarely said much about actual working conditions. Many apprentices, in many societies, complained that they did not receive high quality training, as opposed to all sorts of menial tasks, and were frequently abused and beaten in the bargain. But apprenticeshipâas opposed to other work situations for children (such as with parents or relatives on a farm) could provide some hint of systematic protection.
At the end of childhood, some agricultural societies offered protection, at least in principle, against parental abuse with regard to marriage arrangements. Christianity long held out for the importance of young peopleâs consent in marriage even when parental negotiations clearly organized the match, and Christian courts might reject an engagement in which a young man or woman had no say. Here was another provision showing awareness that there were certain circumstances in which pre-adults might need some special attention against the normal assumption of parental or adult authority.
Finally, all the major religions assumed some obligation on the part of pious parents to prepare children for religious participation. In Christianity this meant an obligation to provide baptism and then arrange for confirmation. Sometimes this preparation might include attendance at a religious schoolâsuch as the Islamic madrasasâbut this varied with means and circumstance and did not generate a universal right or duty.
Community Context
In most agricultural societies it was community oversight, rather than any systematic statements, that really offered some constraints on the treatment of children, however imperfect. The few historians who have tackled the subject largely contend, for example, that what we would term significant abuse of children was fairly rare in most agricultural villages (Demos, 1986). Of course disciplinary standards differed from those now recommended in societies such as the United States: in pre-modern Western Europe there was clearly a lot of spanking for misdeeds; children were often actively shamed in front of their peers; and babies were usually tightly swaddled and even hung on a hook while their mothers worked. Native Americans were shocked at the level of physical discipline Europeans employed against their children; and Africans, with traditions of carrying young children during work, would have been appalled at swaddling. But distinctive disciplinary standards and outright abuse were two different matters. Village oversight seems to have been normally vigilant in making sure that individual families did not beat their children or otherwise physically abuse them beyond a norm. Some historians go on to argue that this system actually protected children better than the more modern combination of considerable family isolation and codified legal rights.
In some instances, finally, courts of law might step in directly in defense of community norms. Several cases in colonial New England attacked fathers who beat children excessively and in one instance, required work on Sundays; children might be given over to the custody of another relative in response (Demos, 2000).
The Human Rights Idea
Two related changes, initially taking shape largely in formal intellectual life, began to develop in Western Europe from the late seventeenth century onward that would ultimately lead to more direct statements about childrenâs rights. One was a new conception of children themselves. The other was the notion of systematic rights of any sort, which would ultimately lead to powerful political statements such as the Bill of Rights in the United States, or the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in the French Revolution.
New ideas about children played against the distinctive Christian belief in original sin. On the heels of the Scientific Revolution and Britainâs turn to parliamentary monarchy, John Locke developed an idea of educable children that was in stark contrast to prior beliefs. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke contended that children at birth are âblank slates,â neither good nor evil, but capable of improvement through education. The implications for childrenâs discipline and upbringing were obvious. Children did not have an inherently evil nature that must be brought under control through physical means or shaming. Rather, they should be approached with kindness and care, and given opportunities through education to develop good character and socially useful skills (Cunningham, 2005; Fass, 2006).
The idea of a neutral or even positive nature at birth gained ground slowly but steadily in Western thought and even in elements of popular culture. Later in the eighteenth century, at the intellectual level, writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau extended claims for the importance of a supportive education. Rousseau went beyond Locke in claiming that children were naturally good, and he devoted great attention to the careful, supportive education that would not spoil this essential quality (Rousseau, 1987). A number of other authors began to talk about education systems that would not only further a childâs capacity to learn, but would also avoid excessive discipline or rote learning. None of this coalesced into an elaborate statement of childrenâs rights, but the new view of children certainly promoted a climate in which conventional treatment of children might be reconsidered.
The process extended beyond the circles of intellectuals and educational theorists. In the United States, for example, Protestant churches undertook an intense debate over the old ideas of original sin during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The result was some ongoing disagreement, with an important Evangelical minority continuing to defend traditional doctrines. But mainstream Protestant churches, and the dominant childrearing advice directed toward the growing middle classes, began to emphasize childrenâs innocence and goodness, and the careful upbringing that these qualities warranted (Mintz, 2004).
The second component of change that began to emerge in the eighteenth century, though not initially applied to children, involved the idea of human rights itself. Already in the previous century, John Locke and several other theorists, embellishing older ideas about natural law, had argued for the essential equality of all members of the human species and the importance of preserving liberty in any valid political system (Locke, 1952). They contended that law and the state exist not to restrain but to enhance human freedom. The existence of certain specific rightsâfor Locke, life, liberty and propertyâwas an essential consequence of this basic framework. Enlightenment thinkers extended this argument. Rousseau thus argued that âequality of rights and the idea of justice which this equality creates originate . . . in the very nature of manâ (Rousseau, 1987, p. 7). States that violated basic rights, by extension, were abusive and illegitimate, and could justifiably be replaced. Various Enlightenment writers added further specifics to the basic argument, talking about the importance of freedom of religion or conscience, freedom of expression, and the unjustifiability of harsh punishments. Torture or other extreme penalties were increasingly discussed as violations of rights (Headly, 2007; Ishay, 2004; Moyn, 2012).
The new political theory was supplemented in Britain and the Northern American colonies, by compassionate views emanating from several of the newer Protestant sects, such as Methodists and Quakers. From this source, as well as the Enlightenment ideas, came unprecedented new movements against slavery: it was no longer legitimate for one individual to be owned by another. One of humankindâs oldest labor systems now came under attack.
What was taking shape, among many ordinary people as well as intellectual and religious leaders, was, as one historian has termed it, a ârevolution in sensibility,â through which established institutions and practices might be reassessed in light of these new beliefs in basic human equality and shared rights. What caused thisâbeyond the obvious cultural sourcesâ continues to be debated: fatigue with religious conflict, possibly some side effects of expanding capitalism, or the impact of rapidly expanding literacy with its capacity to challenge traditional assumptions are all candidates. Whatever the source, the new thinking spread increasingly widely, and it was often accompanied by deep passion, even on behalf of total strangers whose plight might now be brought to public attention (Hunt, 2008).
The results informed not only a series of new campaigns, such as the recurrent petitions against the slave trade, but also the wave of revolutions that took shape at the end of the eighteenth century. Both France and what became the United States proclaimed âinalienableâ human rights (though the term then...
