Children’s rights and parents’ rights: Popular attitudes about when we privilege one over the other

Abstract

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is a widely accepted human rights document and has relevance for child protection policy. This study employs an experimental design with representative samples from Norway and California (USA) to test public perceptions of children's rights in child protection. The countries have welfare states and child protection contexts that differ, and their histories contrast with regard to the UNCRC. Results show that increased severity of risk to a child does not correspond with increased weight on children's rights. However, residents of Norway are more likely to embrace a children's rights orientation, and participants in California are more likely to accept a parents' rights perspective. Demographics such as immigrant status and age account for some of these differences. The study contributes to the literature on children's rights and the role of the state in aligning public policy with public attitudes about children.

Securing permanence for children in care: A cross‐country analysis of citizen's view on adoption versus foster care

“…Kumlin & Haugsgjerd, 2017). As of lately, several studies have examine the child protective system (Berrick et al, 2022a;Helland et al, 2022;Skivenes, 2021;Skivenes & Benbenishty, 2022) and the welfare state policies (Roosma & van Oorschot, 2020;Svallfors, 1996Svallfors, , 2012Valarino et al, 2018) with the opposite approach: Public attitudes, preferences and opinions are regarded as a dependent variable, in which policies and welfare institutions influence citizens' attitudes and their perspectives on the role and status of the welfare system and its values and norms. The empirical focus is an understudied part of the welfare state, the child protection system that shall protect children when the family or parents are maltreating or neglecting them.…”

Legitimate child protection interventions and the dimension of confidence: A comparative analysis of populations views in six European countries

“…Because people's views on child protection are an understudied area in general (Berger and Slack, 2020), and with only a few studies that compare people's attitudes towards interventions (Berrick et al, 2019(Berrick et al, , 2021Burns et al, 2021;Helland et al, 2020Helland et al, , 2022Schmid and Benbenishty, 2011), we believe it is particularly relevant to examine and expand the knowledge base about the role and place of both people's confidence in and moral alignment with the system. Our operationalisation of confidence is based on an understanding of procedural justice as a source of legitimacy if actions and procedures follow just laws, and power is exercised in normatively appropriate ways (Beetham, 1991in Heywood, 2004Rawls, 1993;Tyler and Trinkner, 2018).…”

“…Our study includes six European countries, and we use institutional context to understand confidence level (Berrick et al, 2021;Helland et al, 2022;Svallfors, 2012;Valarino et al, 2018). Two frameworks that relate to this idea are theories of policy feedback (which builds on the premise that policies affect politics over time; see, e.g.…”

“…We see the institutional and cultural context that people are embedded in as formative for their views on what should be a collective responsibility and how society should be built. In line with several other studies (Berrick et al, 2021;Boelens et al, 2010;Helland et al, 2022;Skivenes and Benbenishty, 2022a), we use the CPS as institutional context (see e.g. Valarino et al (2018) using leave policy as institutional context).…”