Babies are people

Rights for babies will be a new idea to a lot of people and a silly idea to some. Babies are completely dependent on adults to do and decide everything for them; they can’t ask for what they need or say or take what they want, so how they possibly have rights and what could those rights be? A few people say they are actually offended by the idea of babies having rights because rights should bring responsibilities or obligations with them and babies cannot meet any of those.

All those positions need re-thinking. People who have never given a thought to babies’ rights probably haven’t thought very much about babies. Human rights belong to everyone who is human, and babies are certainly that.

Of course babies can’t exercise all their human rights but that doesn’t mean they don’t have them. A new baby can’t exercise control over his own head but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.

The concept of rights only seems absurdly grown up for children who are too young to express opinions and make decisions if human rights are confused with civil rights. Meeting the idea for the first time people say things like, 'Surely civil rights are for citizens?' 'Surely citizens are individuals who can make their views known?" And "Surely people are only ‘entitled’ to rights if they acknowledge concomitant responsibilities?'

Many such people are uncomfortable with the language of ‘rights’, feeling that somehow one person’s rights are always at the expense of somebody else’s power, privilege or property. And that’s especially true of children’s rights, which many parents, carers and teachers see as infringing their own ‘rights’ and authority, and communities often see as something that should be subject to responsible behaviour – not rights at all but social contracts.

With that mindset it’s not surprising if the idea of babies’ rights is one step too far. It’s a mindset we need to change, though, for the sake of all babies, the families who care for them and the children they will grow into.

Rights for babies will be a new idea to a lot of people and a silly idea to some. Babies are completely dependent on adults to do and decide everything for them; they can’t ask for what they need or say or take what they want, so how they possibly have rights and what could those rights be? A few people say they are actually offended by the idea of babies having rights because rights should bring responsibilities or obligations with them and babies cannot meet any of those.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Twenty years ago the UK, along with almost every other nation (the notable exception being
the US) signed The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the second most
widely ratified of all conventions ever produced and the most lastingly influential document concerning children.

As the title suggests the Convention is for children and as its interpreting committee makes clear, that means all children, all the time and everywhere. (Articles 1 & 2).

As the Convention was originally drawn up, though, its focus was mainly on older children
and young people; those who could exercise such rights as having their opinions listened to
and contributing to decisions affecting them (Article 12). Where the rights of very young
children are specifically mentioned they mostly refer to rights to physical health and to the care
of children who are not being looked after by their parents (Articles 20-27).

The committee has worked to correct that, but even its General Comment No 7 ‘Implementing child rights in early childhood’ does not focus on infancy. Young children are defined as those under eight years old and while babies are certainly included, (especially in Articles 6, 7 & 8. Features of, and Research into early childhood) they are not specified or differentiated.

Universal recognition of the rights of people who are under one or two years old is both important and urgent. Important because human rights matter just as much (or more if that is possible) to very young, rapidly developing infants as to older children, adolescents or adults. Urgent because this youngest age-group is the most vulnerable to neglect and abuse and currently the most likely to die at the hands of parents, step-parents or ‘carers’.

The particular importance of recognising and respecting infants’ rights

A breach of the human rights of an older child or an adolescent - discrimination, perhaps, or even forceful separation from loving parents- may change his attitudes and his life-course but will probably leave his self – his personality - more or less unscathed. Breaching an infant’s rights, on the other hand, may actually effect the person she becomes, distorting the development of her brain and the working of her nervous system and lessening development of the resilience she will need to cope with difficulties later on.

we’ve known for a long time that a baby’s relationships – and therefore the way he is treated and the environment in which he learns - effect his behaviour, but it is only recently that research has begun to show that those environmental variables effect the actual structure and functioning of his brain and therefore the kind of adult he becomes and, if he has children, the kind of parent. So ensuring the human rights of one generation maximises the chance of human rights for the next, while ignoring those rights: withholding respect, affirmation, inclusion and freedom, tends to pass from one generation to the next too.

This is fresh knowledge coming from contemporary neuroscience; from brain scans in humans and years of research on the brains of primates and other mammals. Sometimes knowledge that is new and surprising is partly camouflaged in old knowledge. Everyone knows, for instance, that the more a baby is talked to the more rapidly his own speech will develop. But not everyone is yet aware that being talked to actually increases aspects of brain growth and maximises a baby’s intelligence. Similarly, it is well-known that babies are easily damaged by physical abuse, but not everyone realises that even if there is no physical damage done to a baby’s brain, fear of violence can distort its development.

Babies’ rights in parents’ hands

Recognising babies’ rights and ensuring that their particular needs are met is the essence of child protection, preventing many problems and interrupting others before they escalate.
The Convention recognises that this is primarily the obligation of parents:

Respect for parents’ roles includes the obligation on States and agencies "not to separate children from their parents unless it is in the child’s best interests" (Article 9). The requirement that all adults and institutions must act "in the best interests of the child" (Article 3) is threaded through many articles. To that end, States must support and assist families in nurturing their children (Article 5) and seek to improve perinatal care for mothers and babies (Article 6).

Article 6 is concerned with the right to life, survival and development, and recognises that poverty and disease remain major obstacles to realising rights in early childhood. But this article recognises that psychosocial well being is interdependent with health and may be put at risk not only by poverty, neglect and abuse but also by insensitive treatment and restricted opportunities.

The Committee’s ‘General Comment no.7’ fills out these messages, talking of the interweaving of children’s health and psycho-social wellbeing, the importance of the ‘strong mutual attachments’ between babies and their parents or caregivers, and the consequent importance for infant rights of providing both practical and emotional support to new mothers and fathers.

This powerful mondial convention, and its committee, makes it clear that while all under-eighteens have the same rights because they are human children, it is only over time that each individual gradually becomes mature enough to understand and realise his or her rights (the concept of ‘evolving capacities’ Article 5).

During this process parents (and others) must continually adjust the levels of support and guidance they offer taking account of children’s interests and wishes as well as their capacities to understand their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. Under-ones have the same rights as all older children because they are human, but they cannot exercise many of those rights for themselves because they are babies. Unfortunately many ordinarily well-intentioned adults, even those who claim to support the Convention on the Rights of the Child, fail to recognise and act upon the obligation that puts upon them.

Some claim that the notion of universal human rights for infants is untenable because there are such wide differences in cultural traditions, and expectations and opinions concerning birth and the care and upbringing of young children. However that explanation is neither acceptable nor adequate because the CRC is sensitive to all such variations, recognising many different practices and opinions but always underpinning the full range with universal human rights.

Article 19 which deals with discipline is a clear example. ‘Discipline’ is a righteous part of parenting and most people maintain that it is parents’ right – even their duty – to discipline their children as they think best. The real meaning of discipline, of course, is teaching children how to behave rather than punishing them for behaving otherwise.

Article 19 does not specify what forms of punishment are or are not acceptable but stresses the underlying principle that children, like everyone else, have the right to protection from any and all forms of violence. Any right parents in any culture or society may claim to punishing children physically, to hitting or otherwise hurting them, to confining, isolating or humiliating them, is therefore in direct conflict with children’s basic rights. Furthermore, while the laws of most countries extend far greater protection from being hit and humiliated to adults than to children, the special defences in the legal systems of some states that protect parents, teachers and carers from prosecution if the violence they do to a child is in the name of discipline, also breach the right to equal protection under the law.

A more realistic reason for the tendency to ignore babies’ rights is that babies themselves tend to be ignored – or cooed over as if they were puppies not people. The Committee on the Rights of the Child requires that "children, including the very youngest children, be respected as persons in their own right…" but often they are not. Instead, babies are seen – if they are seen at all – as appendages or extensions or burdens of their mothers, or as schoolchildren-in-the-making.

Every baby’s development crucially depends on what psychologists call ‘attachment’: human infants’ inbuilt drive to search for a consistently available person with whom she can make a close, secure, mutual relationship and to whom she turns whenever she is anxious or upset. A completing half; a partner in the business of growing up. In all cultures where studies have been done it seems that the mother is a baby’s emotional starting point if she is available at all.

Given our recent and accumulating knowledge of the extent to which babies in the womb are influenced by mothers’ activities and feelings, moods and states this is not surprising. But although mothers usually come first in a baby’s attachment hierarchy, they are not the only people to whom babies become attached. In the second year, given the opportunity, babies also make attachments to fathers that are different but no less powerful.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of attachment relationships to an individual baby’s growth and development. It is through being loved that children become both loving, and lovable. It is through the constant experience of being respected that children come to respect other people. It is because their overwhelming feelings, their impulses and their wild behaviours are safely contained and controlled that they gradually achieve self-control. And it is two or three years of such a relationship that brings them to a point where they begin to understand the whys and wherefores of social demands; to empathise with other people’s feelings, and, even later still, to develop what we call ‘theory of mind’ which is the ability to understand that other people may feel differently from themselves and therefore to see different viewpoints.

One of the most important and most visible impacts of the psychological context of a child’s upbringing is her self-esteem. Any individual’s self-esteem is built out of, and held up by, the esteem in which other people appear to hold her. If parents make demands on children which those children cannot understand – or understand but cannot meet – the children constantly fail and the parents are constantly irritated. And ‘constantly’ is the right word. Research suggests that many parents of mobile babies or young toddlers issue prohibitions ("Stop that"; "don’t touch") every nine minutes on average, and according to the last big survey undertaken for the Department of Health about three quarters of them, 75%, smack babies under two.