Children’s Rights, the Family and ‘Sexual Permissiveness’: Conservative Mobilisations and the Australian Response to International Year of the Child (1979)

Abstract

In 1979, Australian social conservatives seized on the International Year of the Child (IYC) as an opportunity to reassert the importance of the family and warn against ‘sexual permissiveness’. This article traces their strategic appeals to children’s rights to underwrite their campaigns, drawing on case studies of three of the era’s most prominent organisations: the anti-feminist group, the Women’s Action Alliance; the National Right to Life Association and its associated state branches; and the Christian group, the Festival of Light. All three groups used the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) – whose twentieth anniversary coincided with IYC – to increase the credibility and political currency of their campaigns, thereby positioning themselves as key players in the year’s activities. While by no means uncontested, their interventions served to steer public debate and ensured that their concerns occupied a prominent place in the IYC agenda.