The Best Interests of the Child? Is The Best Interests of the Child in the Best Interests of Children?

The writings of Goldstein, Freud and Solnit, particularly some of the concepts they developed, have exercised a profound influence on our thinking about children. A new, revamped, final, authoritative edition presents the opportunity for critical re-assessment. The author finds a partial analytical framework, a dated image of children, a narrow concept of children’s rights, triggers for intervention which leave children dangerously exposed and, above all, a sense that events have moved on leaving the most influential text of this generation firmly rooted in the ideas, problems and concepts of the last.