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I have argued elsewhere that feminist analysis of family needs to take children's rights more seriously, here I want to suggest specifically how we can see the CRC adding a positive force to arguments against punitive neo-liberal family policies, even though the CRC places a strong emphasis on the responsibility of the state to protect the child, even from parents. I will do this largely by drawing from and supplementing the arguments of Dorothy Roberts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist and gay and lesbian theories of family have gone far in rethinking the role that family plays in society and positing new ways that the state should form and support families if it is to enhance, rather than restrict, equality. Despite this, in most discussions of family within both literatures, children receive little attention, unless it can be argued that they will be benefited as a result of better recognizing and supporting parental relationships. In this paper, I explore how feminist theory - and specifically, I draw from Maxine Eichner's critique and revisioning of Martha Fineman's work - might be extended in ways that recognize teens and youth not as potential people, but as people. I develop this argument with a specific group of young people in mind-queer youth. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We begin our analysis of queer issues and democratic education by exploring political theorist Shane Phelan?s analysis of the normative definitions of citizenship, which she asserts exclude gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered people from full citizenship status. This analysis reveals the extent to which full citizenship can be denied even if liberal rights exist, and thus emphasizes how critical cultural transformation is to glbt, or queer, citizenship. After discussing Phelan?s argument, we explore the work of two political theorists who wish to justify and define the role of the state in educating liberal democratic citizens in a multicultural society. Although each argues that the state has an important role in play, neither is able to de-center masculine and parental prerogatives in the way that is necessary for queer citizenship. If the state is to guarantee that students develop into the autonomous adults necessary for liberal democratic society, it must define its educational interest in ways that challenge sexism and homophobia. This argument is strengthened by reading political theory with both critical education theory and sociological and anthropological studies of schools. Because it focuses on the patterns in schools that tend to reproduce inequalities, critical education theory is highly suggestive of the broad critical lens that must be brought to explorations of queer citizenship in education. Researchers who spend significant amounts of time in schools observing and talking with young people and teachers are able to capture the regularities, on many levels, that reproduce social norms, and the conflicts which result when they are contested. Educational researchers also can see and document young people?s agency, even at quite subtle levels that typical indicators of school process ignore, and they can describe how youth interactions function to reproduce or resist dominant norms. Although critical education research is highly suggestive about the relationship between the processes it documents and analyzes at local levels, and the manner in which such processes sediment to become part of socioeconomic hegemonies, this research often fails to consider consequences in terms of wider discussions of liberalism, citizenship, and youth development. Our aim is to make some tentative connections along these lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant assumptions about youth in the United States, as well as legal decisions that both draw on and reinforce these assumptions, limit the rights of all young people. This has a particularly destructive impact on those young people who either identify as gay/lesbian/bisexual or who fail to conform to normative gender roles. In this paper, I connect the issues that these youth face to the lack of rights faced by all young people. I argue that those who care about young people who fail to conform to sex/gender norms need to be part of redefining parental rights and responsibilities. Finally, I suggest that the Convention on the Rights of the Child provides a important beginning for this redefinition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After discussing the centrality of sexuality to the lives of youth in "risk society," I will begin to articulate a vision of sexuality as an expression of agency with the potential to enhance democracy, particularly for young people. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]