Analyzes the origins and workings of the contemporary child welfare system and the challenges presented by global demographic changes and also suggests future policy directions. The notion of children as a class in need of protection has been neither universally nor historically accepted: for instance, families have depended on the income earned by their children to help keep them economically viable. In addition, children’s rights advocates have insisted that children deserve the same rights as those granted adults. Nevertheless, despite multiple, often hotly debated, perspectives on the nature of childhood, there is growing international agreement that such demographic trends as an aging population and the gap between wealth and poverty have put children at risk. Child welfare policies have sought to ameliorate the problems of child labor, child neglect and abuse, and family insolvency, but the present-day child welfare system is overburdened and has little authority to secure the well-being of its constituency. In the absence of political consensus, social workers and child advocates need to encourage multidisciplinary discourse about the needs of children, the range of childhood experiences, the costs of parenting, and the value society places on children.
