Taking Children Seriously: the rise of the children's cause

摘要

Not long ago, the idea of statesmen and women sitting at a conference table to discuss the well-being of children would have been greeted with amazement, if not derision. Compared with the waging of wars, the strength of the dollar or the price of oil, the subject of children was trivial. Or so it was thought, if not spoken. At elections, babies might be kissed and rhetoric about 'the children, our future' flow freely. But to expect a president to immunize a baby or a mayor to concern himself with infant diarrhoea was, frankly, inconceivable. Truly, times have changed.