Isobelle Barrett Meyering highlights the importance of children’s liberation in the first decade of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Australia

Abstract

In a context where cultural anxieties about children and young people regularly make headlines, Isobelle Barrett Meyering’s history of the ideas and practices of the children’s liberation movement in Australia in the 1970s is timely. She brings children’s liberation to our attention specifically through its presence in the Women’s Liberation Movement. Traces of the ideas of 1970s children’s liberation survive in the twenty-first century, in inspiring instances of political activism by children and young people. However, the formulation of notions of children’s rights through the radical ideas of Women’s Liberation has not been systematically recorded or remembered. The mutually constituting relationship between the two bodies of radical thought has been overlooked. Pronouncements like ‘Childhood is hell’ (1), made in 1971 by the influential US feminist writer Shulamith Firestone, and the slogan ‘Free Mum, Free Dad, Free Me, Free Child Care’, written on a banner held by children in the 1975 Sydney International Women’s Day rally, are exciting gems to retrieve from this period (57). The book draws from an archive of conference papers, feminist journals and books, government policy documents, children’s story books, personal papers and a handful of oral history interviews with key Women’s Liberationists who were motivated by the ideas of children’s liberation. After introducing key tenets of children’s liberation – which involves challenging hierarchical power relations between adults and children – the book is structured thematically. Chapter Two returns radical feminist thinking about the oppressive nature of the nuclear family to the history of childcare in the 1970s. Women’s Liberation contributed a unique perspective, one worth recalling as improving childcare these days is often justified only in terms of allowing women to participate in the workforce. Women’s Liberation mothers sought new modes of childcare at home as they monitored practices in existing childcare centres and established their own. Chapter Three discusses the multiple efforts made by feminists in response to the question ‘Are our schools sexist?’ (73). Feminists conducted research into educational practices, scrutinised children’s books and toys, wrote and published their own books, worked in unions and government, and were part of the