Children’s rights are a seriously under discussed issue. You wouldn’t think so, with “what about the children???” being a favorite way to argue for evil bullshit, but it’s a front. In the United States at least, children are considered the property of their parents. There’s nothing to protect children from parents who harm them by refusing to vaccinate, denying them medical care, even shit like refusing to get them social security numbers (some religious families will do this to girls especially, to make it impossible for them to work). We also have the troubled teen industry, where parents can sign off on their child being physically and psychologically abused by strangers (the state will only intervene if it becomes sexual.)
We need a children’s rights movement, but there’s something primal in the conservative Right’s need for a patriarch to completely control their families. It’s treated as an essential right for parents to be able to completely control their children’s lives until they turn 18.
