As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

A scientific paradigm typically embraces research norms and values, such as truth-seeking, critical thinking, disinterestedness, and good scientific practice. These values should prevent a paradigm from introducing defective assumptions. But sometimes, scientists who are also physicians develop clinical norms that are in conflict with the scientific enterprise. As an example of such a conflict, we have analyzed the genesis and development of the shaken baby syndrome paradigm. The point of departure of the analysis is a recently conducted systematic literature review, (...) which concluded that there is very low scientific evidence for the basic assumption held by Child Protection Teams: when certain signs are present the infant has been violently shaken. We suggest that such teams have developed more value-based than scientific-based criteria when classifying SBS cases. Further, we suggest that the teams are victims of “groupthink,” aggravating the difficulties in considering critics’ questioning the criteria established by the teams. (shrink)

Interest in children’s agency within the research process has led to a renewed consideration of the relationships between researchers and children. Child protection concerns are sometimes not recognised by researchers, and sometimes ignored. Yet much research on children’s lives, especially in health, has the potential to uncover child abuse. University research guidance should be in place to safeguard both researchers and the populations under scrutiny. The aim of this study was to examine university guidance on protecting children (...) in research contexts. (shrink)

This article conceptualises theories of ethics relevant to the recognised problem of decision variability in child protection. Within this field, social workers are faced with multiple ethical imperatives when making decisions about children’s care. They must respond to justice principles concerned with duties and consequences, as well as ethical obligations created by the relational and contextual elements of each case. Recent scholarship on decision variability highlights the justice issues that arise when decisions in response to apparently similar cases (...) differ. An ethical imperative is that similar cases should be treated ‘like for like’ so that children’s and family’s rights are upheld consistently. This article contends that ethical concepts relating to both universalist duties such as respect for persons, extended by the concept of interactive universalism, and contextual responses based on an ethic of care, help theorise the complexities of ethical decisions in child protection. These concepts develop a nuanced understanding of the ways social workers resist risk discourses, may make decisions reflecting the participation of service users, and contextual evaluations of risk based on understanding service user’s life histories. Understanding this combination helps explain the reasons behind variability, and evaluate the moral acceptability or otherwise of apparently variable decisions. (shrink)

The management of child protection concerns arouses strong emotions and controversies and creates ethical tensions for all concerned. This paper provides a rational analysis of some of the issues involved and suggests responses to them. The ethical and legal duties of health-care professionals are to act in the best interests of the child by safeguarding children and reporting concerns. But this may involve conflicts with parents and produce reluctance of professionals to become involved, especially in controversial types (...) of abuse. Mandatory reporting of concerns might overcome such reluctance, but may be ineffective in the face of diagnostic uncertainties. Assembly of a stronger diagnostic evidence base would seem ethically justified, but organization of the necessary case controlled studies might be problematic. Even with a comprehensive evidence base, individual diagnoses of abuse will always involve value judgements that should be underpinned by effective training and assessment of core competencies of professionals. These manoeuvres are unlikely to prevent both justified and vexatious complaints, often in relation to breaches in professional duties or concerning professional misconduct. The tendency to blame experts may have contributed to a reluctance of other professionals to become involved, despite proposals for reforms in the expert witness and court systems. Current approaches to child protection may neither promote greater understanding nor be in the best interests of children. A revised social contract for the effective protection of children could include: a duty of care that adequately addresses the primacy of the child's welfare; the acquisition of a sound evidence base; professional transparency and accountability (but with protection from malicious and vexatious complaints); and a shift emphasis towards a more inquisitorial system that embraced the principles of truth and reconciliation. (shrink)

Initially found in population studies designed to discover a link between child abuse and population categories, risk has been institutionalized in British Columbia through the use of a risk assessment tool presumed to measure danger to particular children. Recruitment of the risk speech genre reflects a need for government child protection workers to clearly articulate which children are in need of protection from “risks as they really are” while avoiding the accusation of “intervening too much.” Moreover, (...) risk assessment tools are both audit systems and auditable systems connected through an audit chain. Auditors who represent potential blaming procedures track errors in risk valuation to specific decisions. This entrenches a separation between what we want to know about risk from what we want to do about risk. The apparently objective use of numeric values within risk assessments obscures the continuing role of subjective moral values in the practice of child protection. (shrink)

The author uses a case history to compare the approaches taken by social care teams in engaging with parents whose care of their children has been called into question. As organising secretary for Parent Aid, a voluntary support service for Essex families who had or were likely to become clients of Social Services, she drew up a list of five keys points that would improve working relations with parents in child protection and court situations and relates them to (...) the ethical framework; write reports that are both factual and objective ; take as much time to build a relationship with the parents as you do with the child; remember to treat gossip with extreme caution; donât back off from parents just because they seem hostile; and try to be as honest and reliable as possible. The examples used to illustrate these points are said to demonstrate the five areas where parents most often take objection to Social Servicesâ approach; the same areas that are most likely to cause parentsâ anxiety and anger to harden into belligerence. The author goes on to show that all of these points can be found embedded in the Code of Practice for Social Workers. (shrink)

This paper considers the terms used for designating parents in reports dealing with child protection, and explores the pragmatic impact of the reports’ extremely cautious choice of words. I test the hypothesis that, even if words are not argumentative in themselves, they can become argumentative in the context of a particular discourse. To this end, this paper develops a two-pronged analysis, combining lexical description with quantitative as well as qualitative methodologies. The findings suggest that lexis is argumentative not (...) only because of its paradigmatic dimension, but also because of its syntagmatic dimension. The results may find a practical application when training social workers in how to write their reports. (shrink)

Using the metaphors body and voice and drawing on critical contributions on biopolitics, this article interrogates children’s participation rights in a knowledge culture of ‘evidencing’. With child welfare and protection practice as an empirical example, I analyse written assessment reports from a Swedish child welfare agency, all exemplifying how social workers evidence needs for protection and reasons for removing children from the home. I discuss how ‘evidencing’ equals a knowledge culture of seeing-believing and predicting-believing and the (...) search for visibly damaged bodies and underdeveloped minds. I furthermore problematise how such conceptualisation of evidencing foregrounds children’s ‘speaking’ bodies while silencing their voices. By showing these manifestations of evidencing, this critical contribution discusses some wider epistemic concerns for fields influenced by the knowledge cultures of ‘the evidence-based’. (shrink)

Social welfare workers in the protective services field—among them social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists—are expected to follow the laws of the state in which they practice, but are also bound by their professional code of ethics. Often this does not present a problem, but at times ethical and legal expectations differ. This is particularly problematic where the professionals may be seen as agents of control, reporting possible child abuse, conducting child abuse investigations, inspecting homes, monitoring families, removing children (...) from their homes and the like, often working with or reporting to law enforcement agents where expectations are different and codes of ethics absent. This paper explores the relationship between law and professional ethics, and, in particular, situations in which actions and decisions can be legal yet unethical or ethical but yet illegal. It then analyzes some critical child protective service activities where Child Protective Services (CPS) workers exert significant control over parents and children, and where the legal and ethical requirements may differ. Finally, the paper discusses the problems that CPS professionals face when law and ethics collide, and suggests various steps to resolve some of these conflicts. (shrink)

Parents and guardians in child protection systems are in unequal power relationships with child protection practitioners. This relationship is experienced as exclusionary or even oppressive by many parents and guardians. For families and communities in the child protection system who experience intersectional discrimination and disadvantage, such as people with intellectual disabilities and First Nations people, this unequal relationship and subsequent potential exclusion and oppression can be even more profound. A growing body of literature indicates (...) that advocacy can assist in addressing unequal relationships in other contexts, such as involuntary mental health. This paper explores the role of representational advocacy in supporting parents in child protection settings through a case study of an advocacy service in Victoria, Australia. Using a human rights framework to guide the analysis, the paper highlights how advocacy can help support rights, but that broader structural change will be required to consistently uphold the rights of parents. (shrink)

This study analyzes the questions on aspects of child custody, visitation rights, or child endangerment that judges pose to forensic psychologists in family law proceedings. Before conducting a psychological evaluation, the legal question in the referral has to be translated into case-specific, forensically relevant issues. The only overarching principle guiding this process is the “best interests of the child” criterion. Literature indicates that judges often struggle to define what variables should be specified for a psychological evaluation in (...) their referral questions. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the information judges would like to ascertain from psychological evaluators in child custody and child protection proceedings—an understanding allowing a clearer determination of whether forensic psychologists as experts can deliver this information. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is used to analyze the referral questions that these judges pose to forensic evaluators in terms of (a) underlying topics (latent dimensions) that can be identified within the referral questions and (b) the probability distributions of legal terms and forensic issues contained in the referral questions. This analysis is based on unclassified text data extracted from German court files. Five topics (latent dimensions) were identified within referral questions resembling cases when the issue was as follows: (a) potential child endangerment in the context of visitation contacts, (b) a possibly limited parenting capacity and its potential effects on child well-being, (c) an impairment of the child has already occurred or could occur, (d) a better option concerning custody and residence, and (e) an unclear topic addressing questions on custody, residence, and visitation in which no specific psychological constructs are involved. In four of the five topics, judges utilize their referral questions to ask for case-group-specific psychological information. In one topic addressing questions on custody, residence, and visitation, judges seem to struggle to define criteria that forensic evaluators should assess. Overall, results help to identify and define more clearly the relevant constructs that forensic experts should examine from the perspective of the courts with the goal of making clearer and more accurate recommendations. (shrink)

The paper seeks to analyze children’s bodily vulnerability as grounded in generational order. The thesis is put forward, that the generational order is embodied via body techniques of vulnerability, deployed both by adults and children. In presenting results from research on professional responses to child maltreatment and neglect, three sets of age related body techniques of vulnerability are identified, concerning caregivers, professionals and the children itself.

Care—concern for and attending to the needs of the particular other we take responsibility—requires enacting time in a way that clashes with the industrial ‘clock time’ dominating our lives. Ethicists of care have highlighted the tensions between the temporalities involved in caring as a situated, relational and processual practice and the organization of care work according to standardized clock time. Yet, the practice of care work within bureaucratic work organizations seems to reconcile temporal demands of care and clock time. In (...) this article, we build on Barbara Adam’s concept of ‘timescape’ (Adam, Timewatch: The social analysis of time, Polity, 1995; Adam, Time, Polity, 2004) to inquire how care workers juggle apparently conflicting temporalities. Through a participant observation study of a child protection agency in France, we discover that care workers ‘trick’ time by carving out care timescapes that resist the clock—time as continuous, non-standardized, and in the present moment—while utilizing the structure of clock time in the form of ‘scheduling work’ to negotiate for and safeguard the process time they needed to ensure the provision of appropriate, ethical care. Confirming the centrality of time to ethical practices in organizations, our study further evidences and elucidates the intricate relations between clock time and process time in the ethical practice of care. (shrink)

In September 2003, we released the first results of a national community attitude tracking study about child abuse and child protection. At that time, we concluded that as a community, violence against children was tolerated. The community did not understand or appreciate the seriousness, size and cost of child abuse in Australia. There was evidence that child abuse was not viewed as an important challenge facing children in Australia. A second study conducted in 2006 found (...) that nothing much had changed, indeed community engagement with the issue of child abuse may have even deteriorated. A third study in 2010 found that the community actively avoids the problem of child abuse rating it less concerning than high petrol prices. In 2021, 18 years after the first report was published, we have concluded again that child abuse remains out of sight and out of mind as a community concern. This article describes the findings of this fourth iteration of our survey and analyses the implications for ensuring that individuals are more engaged and committed to taking action to preventing child abuse and/or protecting children from violation. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines Romanian child protection reforms during European Union accession as a case of externally facilitated modernization aimed at solving acute social problems. The data for this case study came primarily from fifty-three unstructured interviews with civil servants, civil society representatives, and EU officials. The author finds that in a similar manner to other externally driven modernization projects, the belief according to which Western institutions constituted a universal blueprint, applicable regardless of particular contexts and (...) historical legacies, led to unintended consequences. What is more, because the reformers did not envisage that Western institutions might carry their own pathologies, they ended up replicating some of these pathologies. The study suggests that the goal of externally facilitated public policy should not be to create replicas of Western institutions but to spur local innovation that takes advantage of successful Western institutional logics. (shrink)

In Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Child Protective System: A Critical Analysis from Law, Ethics, and Catholic Social Teaching, Stephen M. Krason gathers essays by leading scholars and practitioners to comment through the prism of Catholic social thought, on the plight afflicting American families and the role of the child protective system. Here readers will find critical essays on the deleterious effect of the 1974 passage of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act; assessments of (...) current American policies on child abuse and neglect and the role of the CPS within the context of prevailing international human rights principles and Catholic social teaching; a survey of the enforcement of CPS policies from a legal and constitutional perspective; research data disputing the CPS principle that all parents are potential abusers and illustrating the greater prevalence of abuse and neglect in broken, “blended,” and “untraditional” families; and arguments for poverty and unemployment as the prime culprits in the mistreatment of children. Also included are the amicus curiae briefs that the Society of Catholic Social Scientists submitted in two U.S. Supreme Court cases on parental rights, the CPS, and state control over the family. (shrink)

For many rare diseases, the availability of effective interventions is limited or non-existent. In this context, clinical research evaluating emerging interventions may be the only potentially “the...

Numerous laws have passed to move away from criminalising youth who trade sex. Specialised courts have also been established to support youth. Despite proponents' contention that specialised, trauma-informed courts are less punitive than typical interventions, research is limited. This article explores one specialised dependency court's efforts to assist youth ‘at risk’. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observations, I argue that laws and trauma-informed court interventions intensify the supervision of youth and families while inadvertently concealing the gendered-racialised effects of child (...) welfare system involvement. Ethnographic findings contribute to sociolegal and anti-carceral feminist research on carceral control beyond the criminal legal system. This work also explores the ethics of carceral-trauma entanglements that accompany decriminalisation’s afterlife. (shrink)

Decision support systems, which incorporate artificial intelligence and big data, are receiving significant attention in the public sector. Decision support systems are sociocultural artefacts that are subject to a mix of technical and political choices, and critical investigation of these choices and the rationales they reflect are paramount since they are inscribed into and may cause harm, violate fundamental rights and reproduce negative social patterns. Applying and merging the concepts of sense-making and translation, this article investigates the rationales, translations and (...) critical reflections that shape the development of a decision support system to support social workers assessing referrals concerning child neglect. It presents findings from a qualitative case study conducted in 2019–2020 at the Citizen Centre Children and Young People, Copenhagen Municipality, Denmark. The analysis shows how key actors through processes of translation construct, negotiate and readjust problem definitions, roles, interests, responsibilities and ideas of ambiguity and accountability. Although technological solutionism is present in these processes, it is not the only rationale invested. Rather, technological and data-driven rationales are adjusted to and merged with rationales of efficiency, return on investment and child welfare. Through continuous renegotiation of roles, responsibilities and problems according to these rationales, the key actors attempt to orchestrate ways of managing the complexity facing child welfare services by projecting images of future potentials of the decision support system that are yet to be realised. (shrink)

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power (...) to commit pregnant women involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power (...) to commit pregnant women involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power (...) to commit pregnant women involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

This paper argues that social contexts of inequality are crucial to understanding the ethics of gestational harm and responsibility. Recent debates on gestational harm have largely ignored the social context of gestators, including contexts of inequality and injustice. This can reinforce existing social injustices arising from colonialism, socio‐economic inequality and racism, for example, through increased regulation of maternal behaviour. To demonstrate this, I focus on the related notions of the ‘future child’ and an obligation of easy rescue, which have (...) been used to discuss the ethics of gestational harm in the context of alcohol consumption during gestation and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). I use a feminist perspective to evaluate these ideas and conclude that anyone concerned with remediation of social injustice has good reason to be suspicious of the notion of the future child in the context of gestational harm. (shrink)

Families of children with mental health challenges may have been particularly vulnerable to emotional distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional study surveyed 81 parents of children ages 6–17 years receiving mental health treatment in an outpatient clinic during the pandemic. We sought to characterize the impact of the pandemic on family relationships and parental well-being. Additionally, regression and ANCOVA models examined associations between four potentially protective factors—parents’ psychological resilience, perceived social support, positive family experiences during the pandemic, and children’s (...) use of cognitive or behavioral coping strategies—with family relationships and parental well-being. Findings suggest that families of children with mental health conditions experienced remarkable challenges to family relationships, parental well-being, and parents’ perceived capacity to support their children’s mental health. Nearly 80% of parents reported a negative impact of the pandemic on their own well-being, and 60% reported reduced ability to support their children’s mental health. Simultaneously, protective factors appeared to mitigate the negative impact of the pandemic. Particularly, support within the family and from external sources were associated with better self-reported well-being for parents and their capacity to support their children. Children’s use of coping tools, likely enhanced by mental health treatment, was also positively related to better family relationships and parental ability to support children with mental health challenges. Our findings highlight the need for enhancing supports for families at multiple levels including individual skill-building, family-based/parenting support, and community-based support. (shrink)

More than a quarter of the global population of two billion children live in Islamic countries; therefore, their protection is vital while a handful of them are suffering from lack of hygiene, education, and poverty. The current armed conflict in different ways also has an effect and seriously impacts children as victims and associates in armed groups. Organization of Islamic Conference as a collective voice of its 57 members, initiated a series of efforts in this regard. Islamic texts and (...) traditions show significant importance for child protection, but what has been done until today by OIC as a main intergovernmental Organization guided by Islamic principles, values and norms, is not sufficient. Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Islam is the first human rights binding document adopted by OIC as part of consecutive efforts of OIC to promote protection of children. Although it is regarded as an important step, its adequacy for protection of children affected by armed conflicts is under question. Furthermore, in comparison to International Humanitarian Law and Convention on the Rights of the Child, it does not reflect proportionately and further provisions for children affected, with regard to the extent and the dimensions of conflicts in Islamic countries. (shrink)

This article reviews pertinent literature and presents findings from recent research to illustrate how CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) private law practitioners understand, experience and manage the tension between empowerment and protection in welfare report enquiries. The traditional approach in the United Kingdom has been for children to be protected, especially when their divorced or separated parents are in conflict, but the balance is changing, as calls for the active participation of children in decisions that (...) affect them continue to grow louder. (shrink)

Understanding Child and Adolescent Behaviour in the Classroom is a vital guide for pre-service and in-service teachers, providing the tools to respond effectively and ethically to child and adolescent behaviour that is of concern. In this innovative book, expert authors offer 'positive rules' that will assist educators in their classroom practice. Key practical issues that are addressed include: • Building a purposeful and emotionally and psychologically positive classroom culture • Recognising and responding to children who present with social, (...) emotional and behavioural difficulties • Using research to inform and enrich classroom practice around student conduct • Working collegially to respond to the social, emotional and/or behavioural needs of individual students, including those needs associated with poor mental health and/or child protection Cutting-edge research from psychology, behavioural science and education is accessibly presented to help develop professional expertise and knowledge in the area of child and adolescent behaviour. (shrink)

The current thesis discusses how tools for analysing power are developed predominately for adults, and thus remain underdeveloped in terms of understanding injustices related to age, ethnicity/race and gender in childhoods. The overall aim of this dissertation is to inscribe a discourse of intersecting social injustices as relevant for childhoods and child welfare, and by interlinking postcolonial, feminist, and critical childhood studies. The dissertation is set empirically within the policy and practice of Swedish child welfare, here exemplified by (...) the assessment framework Barns Behov i Centrum. It aims to explore how Swedish child welfare, as a field of knowledge, modes of knowing and knowing subjects, constitutes an arena for claims and responses to intersecting social justice issues. The material consists of BBIC primers and selected samples from, a total of 283 case reports from a Swedish social service agency. The case reports address assessments of children. This dissertation is based on four qualitative studies using discourse analysis, as well as analysis inspired by thematic and case-study methodology. Two studies focus on child welfare discourses in BBIC documents involving social problems and violence, and two studies are based on child welfare case reports. Studies I­­-II address child welfare policy and practice by analysing the conditions required for children to participate, in terms of children’s moral status and in terms of status of ‘evidencing’ needs for protection. Studies III­­-IV explore this further from the perspective of intersecting and embodied social injustices in childhoods. Together, the studies interconnect child welfare as a field of knowledge, modes of knowing and knowers with child welfare as a moral arena for claims to rights, recognition, and social justice. The synthesised findings point to child biowelfare, in which justice discourses are largely absent. Biowelfare is informed by a mode of knowing and ‘evidencing’ risks to children’s health and development, which are confined to scientific predicting-believing, seeing-believing by professionals and a moral economy of care, all of which constrain the idea that injustices are structural and intersecting. Biowelfare primarily responds to children as ‘speaking’ biological bodies, rather than as voices of justice. In this sense, injustices of an epistemological nature are interconnected with social injustices. When issues of justice are mobilised in case reports and policy, they come across as rather ‘unjust’, primarily confined to the sphere of the family home of racialised children and not connected to ‘general’ children. In addition to intersections of age, ethnicity/race and gender, class and health are fundamental to recognition and protection in biowelfare. Finally, the dissertation indicates the need for a moral economy which responds to intersecting social injustices such as racial, gender-based and ageist violence in childhoods, and violations of children’s bodily integrity. (shrink)

Child soldiers, who often appear to be both victims and perpetrators, present a vexing moral and legal challenge: how can we protect the rights of children while seeking justice for the victims of war crimes? There has been little stomach, either in domestic or international courts, for prosecuting child soldiers—but neither has this challenge been systematically addressed in international law. Establishing a uniform minimum age of criminal responsibility would be a major step in the right direction; we argue (...) that such a standard ought to be guided by the best evidence from neuropsychology about the development, during childhood and adolescence, of the executive functions that give rise to morally and legally responsible agents. In light of that evidence, which suggests that the brain’s executive functions are still maturing into early adulthood, we recommend a graded structure of culpability for child soldiers. (shrink)

Since children are considered incapable ofgiving informed consent to participate inresearch, regulations require that bothparental permission and the assent of thepotential child subject be obtained. Assent andpermission are uniquely bound together, eachserving a different purpose. Parentalpermission protects the child from assumingunreasonable risks. Assent demonstrates respectfor the child and his developing autonomy. Inorder to give meaningful assent, the child mustunderstand that procedures will be performed,voluntarily choose to undergo the procedures,and communicate this choice. Understanding theelements of informed consent (...) has been theparadigm for assessing capacity to give assent.This method leaves the youngest, leastcognitively mature children vulnerable towaiver of assent and forced researchparticipation. Voluntariness can also becompromised by the influence of authorityfigures who can exert undue influence andcoerce children to participate in research. This paper discusses factors that may influencethe decision to give assent/permission,potential parent-child conflict in theassent/permission process and how it isresolved, and potential parental undueinfluence on research participation. Theseissues are illustrated with quotations drawnfrom a larger qualitative study of parentalpermission and child assent (data notpresented). We suggest a developmentalapproach, viewing assent as a continuum rangingfrom mere affirmation in the youngest childrento the equivalent of the informed consentprocess in the mature adolescent. (shrink)

The United States Supreme Court hasrecently ruled that virtual child pornographyis protected free speech, partly on the groundsthat virtual pornography does not harm actualchildren. I review the evidence for thecontention that virtual pornography might harmchildren, and find that it is, at best,inconclusive. Saying that virtual childpornography does not harm actual children isnot to say that it is completely harmless,however. Child pornography, actual or virtual,necessarily eroticizes inequality; in a sexistsociety it therefore contributes to thesubordination of women.