Children's rights: a review of children's and adults' perceptions

The way in which children perceive their rights along with the type of rights they feel they should be afforded, is affected by a variety of factors. The studies reviewed in this article show that aspects such as level of development, culture, socio-economic status, age, gender, environment, religious affiliation and contextualization all play an important role in children's rights reasoning. The deduction hence made is that the field of children's perceptions of their rights is a complex one, calling for many considerations to be addressed before any legislation pertaining to these rights can be made. Since children are to a large extent governed by adults, it was also decided to include a review of adults' perceptions of children's rights in the article. Factors that played a role in the adults' perceptions included age, marital status, religious affiliation, ethnicity and level of education. The studies reviewed showed that generally adults felt more comfortable affording children nurturance and protection rights rather than freedom and choice rights, though the age of the child was seen as an important consideration in this choice. An important balance between the rights of the child and the rights of the adults, into whose care children are entrusted, is furthermore suggested, since both need to be considered in legislative decisions.