An editor's notebook
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK RIGHTS 'R US KIDS, HILLARY & THE LAW Back in 1973, when the children's rights movement first loomed and then burgeoned, I had all the ammunition I needed to pepper it...
...AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK RIGHTS 'R US KIDS, HILLARY & THE LAW Back in 1973, when the children's rights movement first loomed and then burgeoned, I had all the ammunition I needed to pepper it with grapeshot: a newly minted master's degree in American history, a newly published book on day care, and a recently completed stint investigating New York City's foster-care system...
...In the early seventies, it was the lawyers' turn...
...And when even lawyers cannot change this situation, we really are in trouble...
...The circle has been closed and there is talk of bringing back the orphanage and opening residential schools...
...The other branch of this rights movement, represented by Clinton, was part of a long, distinguished, and not entirely successful American tradition of philanthropic concern for the welfare of orphaned, delinquent, and troubled children...
...But it was a model of reasonableness in comparison to a Children's Bill of Rights that was also a product of the children's rights movement...
...Clinton's well-polished law review article seemed to me historically and sociologically naive...
...MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS Commonweal 8 May 1992: 5...
...In fact, Clinton wrote the article as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund, now one of the country's most effective and respected advocates for children, but one that does not seem to have pursued the "rights" question...
...My second salvo said there was a difference, in that the earlier saviors really did know something about children...
...Or maybe all of the social workers had become lawyers...
...True, the liberationist agenda (maybe we should just call it libertarian) has worked its way into the ordinary lives of many adolescents, thanks mostly to free market forces, television, and drugs...
...But nothing Clinton—or other advocates—wrote back in 1973 about children's rights has materially changed the condition of children and adolescents when they lack parents who speak for them...
...Lawyers can't heal families...
...This bill of rights urged that children be granted the right to self-determination, to alternative home environments, to educate themselves, to freedom from physical punishment, to sexual freedom, to economic power, to political power, etc.—little Jacobins unite...
...Children cannot speak for themselves...
...About Hillary Clinton one thing is clear: She didn't have the answers back in 1973...
...Clinton's new-found fame sent me back to reread "Children under the Law...
...Her "Children under the Law," was the lead in a two-part special report of the Harvard Educational Review (November 1973), titled "The Rights of Children...
...As we actually seem to be: Senator Daniel Moynihan has recently coined the phrase, "the zero-parent family" to describe the growing number of children "orphaned" by addictions, AIDS, and the inherent fragility of single-parent families...
...I can see now that my flight to the soap box was overly dramatic and probably unnecessary—lawyers and rights language have had no more luck improving the lot of children than did social workers and adjustment language...
...She probably doesn't have them now...
...Much of this was inspired by the effervescence of the late sixties: Woodstock, sexual liberation, and "flower children," and focused on cultural, sexual, and economic liberation for children, and, as I then preached, perpetual servitude for parents...
...Thus for many years, social workers "spoke" for children in foster care or orphanages and the judicial system had its probation officers, detention centers, and family and juvenile courts...
...The novelty here was the interest of lawyers and the use of "rights" language with its focus on constitutional protections, on the quality of children's legal representation, and on the due process procedures of child-serving institutions, such as schools, foster-care agencies, juvenile courts, and detention centers...
...In addition, the lawyers could busy themselves carving out a whole new area: the right of competent children to act on their own behalf, even against their parents' judgments or interests...
...4: 8 May 1992 Commonweal Basically a summary of then-recent Supreme Court decisions, Clinton's article discussed and quietly advocated two kinds of "rights" for children: adult rights that might be extended to "competent" children, and rights extended to children with special needs...
...If you haven't got "good enough" parents (to paraphrase the British child psychiatrist, D.W...
...On the legal side, there have been changes in laws governing the treatment of children by courts, schools, and childcare agencies...
...Clattering on to my soap box, I fired the first round, informing all and sundry that this was just one more effort by a bunch of professional do-gooders (in this case lawyers) to reform the reforms of previous generations of professional "child savers" (social workers, educators, probation officers, and therapists...
...I was, in short, skeptical about adopting "children's rights" as a slogan and a strategy...
...I found particular grist for my skepticism in an article written by one Hillary Rodham (now famous, as Hillary Rodham Clinton, for standing by her man...
...In fact, the situation of many children is worse than ever...
...So whatever job she might get in a new administration, please God, don't let it have to do with children...
...Winnicott), you've got troubles no matter who speaks for you...
...Rights talk doesn't promote responsibility-taking...
...when their parents cannot or will not, others must speak and act on their behalf...
...The law could correct injustices visited upon children not only by their parents, but by all of those systems created to save children...
Vol. 119 • May 1992 • No. 9
