Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution 1969-1979

When Australian women’ s liberationists challenged prevailing expectations of female domesticity, they were accused of being anti-mother and anti-child. Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution provides a much-needed reassessment of this stereotype. Drawing on extensive archival research and personal accounts, it places feminists at the forefront of a new wave of children’ s rights activism that went beyond calls for basic protections for children, instead demanding their liberation. Historian Isobelle Barrett Meyering revisits this revolutionary approach and charts the debates it sparked within the women’ s movement. Her examination of feminists’ ground-breaking campaigns on major social issues of the 1970s— from childcare to sex education to family violence— also reveals women’ s concerted efforts to apply this ideal in their personal lives and to support children’ s own activism. Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution sheds light on the movement’ s expansive vision for social change and its lasting impact on the way we view the rights of women and children.   

Isobelle Barrett Meyering is a historian of Australian feminism, childhood and the family.