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I think humans discovered child welfare was important long before there were any organizations at all.

pessimizer 4y ago
It's not usually safe to assume that current values are somehow invariant. Humans have never discovered child welfare was important, because that's not something you discover, it's something you decide. > Animals were legally defined as property, but Bergh's watershed legislation recognized cruelty as an offense to the animal itself—irrespective of ownership.(3) Historian Susan Pearson argues that these laws helped transform American liberalism—from a classical conception of rights in the negative—to augur the rise of the modern "interventionist" liberal state. Pearson contends that this positive conception of rights drew animal protectionists into child protection in the 1870s. Bergh's chief counsel, Elbridge Gerry, founded the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874 after he secured the arrest and conviction of an abusive foster mother for felonious assault. Animal protectionists across the nation subsequently instituted amalgamated "humane societies," which safeguarded animals and children under a singular protective fold, positing that helpless "beasts and babes" had a right to protection because they could suffer. https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2015/november/the-history-of-animal-protection-in-the-united-states/ https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2015/november/the-history-of-...
- necovek 4y ago
  "argues", "contends"... And even with those qualifiers, you are only talking of legislative decision to protect child's welfare in USA. Eg. a quick search finds legislation aiming to improve protections for children in UK 50 years prior to your "1870s": http://history.parkfieldprimary.com/victorians/lord-shaftsbury http://history.parkfieldprimary.com/victorians/lord-shaftsbu... Legislation is only needed when a particular behaviour becomes incompatible with current values, or has long been incompatible but becomes so prevalent to need legal recourse to stop. Children were protected by their parents and families through the ages, and while it was certainly not universal, it was prevalent. Though, I do recognize that the very definition of who children were was different, as it was mostly pre-puberty children to be treated with more protection.

It's not usually safe to assume that current values are somehow invariant. Humans have never discovered child welfare was important, because that's not something you discover, it's something you decide. > Animals were legally defined as property, but Bergh's watershed legislation recognized cruelty as an offense to the animal itself—irrespective of ownership.(3) Historian Susan Pearson argues that these laws helped transform American liberalism—from a classical conception of rights in the negative—to augur the rise of the modern "interventionist" liberal state. Pearson contends that this positive conception of rights drew animal protectionists into child protection in the 1870s. Bergh's chief counsel, Elbridge Gerry, founded the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874 after he secured the arrest and conviction of an abusive foster mother for felonious assault. Animal protectionists across the nation subsequently instituted amalgamated "humane societies," which safeguarded animals and children under a singular protective fold, positing that helpless "beasts and babes" had a right to protection because they could suffer. https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2015/november/the-history-of-animal-protection-in-the-united-states/ https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2015/november/the-history-of-...

necovek 4y ago
"argues", "contends"... And even with those qualifiers, you are only talking of legislative decision to protect child's welfare in USA. Eg. a quick search finds legislation aiming to improve protections for children in UK 50 years prior to your "1870s": http://history.parkfieldprimary.com/victorians/lord-shaftsbury http://history.parkfieldprimary.com/victorians/lord-shaftsbu... Legislation is only needed when a particular behaviour becomes incompatible with current values, or has long been incompatible but becomes so prevalent to need legal recourse to stop. Children were protected by their parents and families through the ages, and while it was certainly not universal, it was prevalent. Though, I do recognize that the very definition of who children were was different, as it was mostly pre-puberty children to be treated with more protection.