In Their Best Interest?: The Case against Equal Rights for Children

From where they live and which school they attend to whether they may work, children's decisions are controlled by parents and guardians. Advocates of equal rights for children have, however, offered both empirical evidence and ethical arguments against the popular assumption that children are incompetent to exercise the same freedoms as adults. Laura M. Purdy here challenges both aspects of the case for children's liberation, rejecting the conclusion that in democratic societies legal distinctions between children and adults should be eliminated.