Dang Ke Duc for the ILO/Flickr. Creative Commons.
When do de facto property rights—which derive from relationships of dependence—trump, bypass, or otherwise remove the need for consent? This is an old question that has had intense ramifications for both women and children. In the United States, women have struggled for the better part of the past 200 years to have their personal sovereignty, including over their sexuality, fully recognised. In contrast, children have remained, in many ways, firmly within the realm of their parents’ private property.
This article explores the obstacles that scholars, activists and members of the public face when they ask the question: when is a child a slave? Understanding how property rights and parental rights overlap in both law and custom is crucial for understanding which children are perceived as worthy of rescue and which are not.
