Recent legal movies - stemming from the Gillick decision and incorporated into the Children Act 1989 - appear to champion the right of the mature child to autonomy. This article argues that these have been contradictory manoeuvres, both at the level of statute and in practice. Although (some) children's wishes are being listened to, the shift toward giving children independence in decision making about their lives has not been straigtforward. However, these contradictions can be understood as consistent with a contemporary mode of governmentality that treats members of a family as individuals but also befriends ‘the family’ as a unit. Responding to the problems encountered by welfarism, ‘neo-liberalism’ offers increased distanciation between ‘the State’ and ‘the family’. At the same time, the family is problematized as a political site, and those subordinated by classical liberalism are offered routes by which to challenge the arbitrariness of familial power.
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Vikki Bell (1993) studied this question.