TOWARD A RIGHTS-SENSITIVE AGENDA FOR RESEARCH ON CHILD WELL-BEING Gary B. Melton

1. TOWARD A RIGHTS-SENSITIVE AGENDA FOR RESEARCH ON CHILD WELL-BEING Gary B. Melton Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life Clemson University Clemson, SC, USA International Society for Child Indicators November 4, 2009

2. TASKS • Consider the nature of human rights, as • applied to children • Identify the implications for topics and • methods of child research • Propose a normative framework for • analysis of findings

3. Psychological Jurisprudence • Show how to match legal principles (especially in re human dignity) to social reality • Enhance sense of community by illuminating common values • Clarify process of legal socialization, to facilitate development of democratic values • Enable policymakers to develop and refine rules and establish structures consistent with promotion of human welfare • Increase the perceived legitimacy of the legal system and enhance respect for the law

4. Core PrinciplesUniversal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) • All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (art. 1) • Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. (art. 6)

5. The Application of Human Rightsto Children • Philosophical foundation: Children deserve respect as persons with actual or potential capacity for reason and, therefore, with inherent dignity as human beings • Legal foundation: Logical corollary to full recognition of the humanity of other disadvantaged groups • If “everyone” has rights, then how can children be excluded from such entitlements? • Theological foundation: Children are people created in the image of God, and therefore are owed the respect and loving care that are corollary to that status (see, e.g., World Vision)

6. Philosophical Challenges • Key question is not whether children should be treated like adults but instead whether they should be treated like people • Shift from primary societal interest in children’s socialization • Development as future citizens • Protection of children’s well-being • Facilitation of their meaningful participation in the community • ‘Child advocates’ have conflicts of interest • Particular issues • General orientation: Kiddie lib or child saver?

7. Communitarian or Individualist? Yes! Respect for personal dignity implies social responsibility to safeguard intimacy. Individual rights lack meaning without social relatedness; relationships are unsatisfying without mutual respect. Accordingly, personal autonomy is maximized in the context of community; social cohesion is most likely when rights talk is taken seriously. Gary Melton, in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (1995)

8. The first law of our being is that we are set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings…. We are meant to live as sisters and brothers, as members of one family, the human family…. Archbishop Desmond Tutu

9. Where after all, do human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in, the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world. Eleanor Roosevelt, in a speech to the United Nations (1958)

10. QUERY:What is the Scope of the Convention on the Rights of the Child? SHORT ANSWER: Wherever government and children both go, the Convention goes; e.g., • abuse and neglect • artistic expression • foster care • income supports • mass media • recreation • residential Rx • adoption • divorce • health care • juvenile justice • minorities • refugees • special education • armed conflict • education • immigration • labor • politics • religion • substance abuse etc.

11. Monitoring of Rights Implementation What it usually is • Question: Are we in compliance? • Data: Legal codes  • Form of the Answer: Binary (checking off the boxes) and static What it should be • Question: What are we learning?  • Data: Empirical observation  • Form of the Answer: Open-ended, developmental, situational, experiential, and changing

12. Sample Questions of Development • What concerns are central to children’s experience? E.g., the boundaries of expectable privacy; see Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, art. 16 • What factors are most potent in children’s development as meaningful participants in community life? E.g., that are important in children’s attainment of “a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development”; see CRC, art. 27, § 1) • What are the means by which children’s rights can be most efficiently and effectively vindicated? E.g., the procedures to be used to fulfill the right to due process must minimally assure that juvenile respondents are “treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child’s sense of dignity and worth…”; see CRC, art. 40, § 1)?

13. Relevant Empirical Methods Developmental (usually interview) studies of the situations in which children of various ages and backgrounds experience… • a sense of personhood (personal meaning) • When do you feel important (“like somebody”)? • When do you feel empty (“like nobody”)? • What do you care about? • Do you think that you can make a difference? When and how? • a sense of community • When (where) do you feel that you belong? • Do you think that others (e.g., teachers) think that what you feel (do) matters?

14. Other Relevant Methods • Survey research (e.g., arts. 12 & 13) • Administrative data, but counting is rarely enough • Single domains are only marginally relevant • Services must be delivered in a respectful manner • Subjective experience is important • Services must be effective • Promotion of well-being and prevention of problems should be the foremost policy goals • The most relevant data sources are often outside the expertise, interest, and authority of planners in human services

15. The Right to Personality • Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. • …The child should be fully prepared to live an individual life in society…. • RIGHT TO AN IDENTITY, including name, nationality, and family relations • RIGHT TO EDUCATION directed to the full development of the human personality….

16. Right to Personality (cont.) • RIGHT TO PROTECTION OF PERSONAL BOUNDARIES: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. • RIGHT TO PERSONAL SECURITY: All appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child and to remediate harm when the child is so wronged

17. The Right to a Family Environment • …The child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love, and understanding. (CRC, preamble) • The widest possible protection and assistance shall be accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group of society…. (Int’l Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 1966, art. 10; see also Int’l Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 23)

18. The Right to a Family Environment (cont.) • The CRC guarantees numerous entitlements for parents that are the manifestation of children’s rights; e.g., • the right to know and care for the child • the right to respect by the government of the parents’ rights, responsibilities, and duties • the right, absent judicial proceedings to the contrary, to be with the child • the right to maintain contact across national boundaries • the right to assistance in caring for the child • the right to material assistance to meet basic needs

19. THE RIGHT TO GROW UP IN A COMMUNITY • Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (Universal Declaration, art. 29, § 1) • Basic to the right to a family environment • Basic to identity, especially for children • Venue for participation and, therefore, for recognition as a person • Fundamental element in dignity

20. The Right to Grow Up in a Community (cont.) • The Universal Declaration established a “right to participate in the cultural life of the community” • The drafters of the CRC also recognized “the importance of the traditions and cultural values of each people for the protection and harmonious development of the child”; hence, • The rights and responsibilities of parents may be extended “by local custom” to “members of the extended family or community” • Children, including those in a linguistic or cultural minority, have a right of access to mass media and cultural materials

21. Conclusions:Toward a Rights-Sensitive Culture Typical Rights Monitoring • Fragmented, cursory, and minimally empirical • ASSUMPTION: If behavior is legally prescribed, it happens • PURPOSE: To prove that the reporting State party (organization) is not eligible for admission to the Evil Nation (Organization) of the Month Club

22. Better Rights Monitoring • Conventional management information systems and evaluation research • Hence, description of compliance with (hundreds of) ‘statutes’ in the CRC • ASSUMPTION: The problem is a lack of accountability of bureaucrats in formal organizations • PURPOSE: To enhance consistency with existing norms of ‘good [professional] practice’ in each ‘tree’ in the ‘forest’

23. Best Rights Monitoring • Inquiry begins with consideration of the compatibility of policies and practices with ‘constitutional’ norms (the ‘forest’) consistent with children’s development as persons • Identity and meaning • Family environment • Sense of community

24. Best Rights Monitoring (cont.) • PROCESS: Assess whether policy making and practice development comport with principles consistent with norms of respect for children as persons • OUTCOMES: Assess whether policies and practices comport with a vision of a society (communities) consistent with such principles • INTEGRATION: Assess whether norms and structures are present to sustain such a vision

25. Best Rights Monitoring (cont.) • COMMITMENT: Assess whether there are norms of sensitivity to children’s rights and a collective willingness to learn from experience and to apply such lessons • Final points • ‘Typical’ to ‘better’ to ‘best’ is perfectly correlated with technical and sociopolitical difficulty • ‘Best’ is grand but not grandiose • Provides the foundation for communities built on the best aspirations of people of good will  life governed by the Golden Rule