Constituting Rights as Needs: Psychology and the Rise of Middle-Class Childhood

“Are children persons (ren) or objects (wu)?” inquires the author of an essay entitled “Avoiding Erroneous Views of the Child in Family Education” (“Zai jiating jiaoyu zhong quzou ertong guan de wuqu”). The question might seem peculiar, but the writer, who is also the former Deputy Head of the Wuhan Education Research Institute in China, is not being rhetorical. In fact, he observes, many contemporary Chinese parents are not entirely sure of the answer. Deploring the commonplace tendency “to treat children as the showcase of the family” while pressuring them to devote a majority of their time to academic work and skill-enhancement activities, the author pleads with caregivers to “advance with the times” and to recognize that children are “not small-sized adults,” but persons with “unique emotional needs which vary according to their age” (Wang Peng, 2002: 104; emphasis added).