Attitudes toward Children's Rights: Nurturance or Self‐Determination?

This article describes the development of a classification schema consisting of two conceptual orientations toward the rights of children (nurturance and self‐determination) which cut across five different content areas. An attitudinal scale based on this schema was administered to 381 individuals representing both sexes and four different groups: high school students, undergraduate education majors, other undergraduates, and adults. High school students held significantly more positive attitudes toward the extension of self‐determination rights and significantly less positive attitudes toward the extension of nurturant rights to children than any other group. In addition, differences by sex were obtained toward extending nurturant rights, with females holding significantly more positive attitudes than males. Overall, respondents evidenced more positive attitudes toward the extension of nurturant than of self‐determination rights.