The most recent phase of childhood – let us call it the age of the child citizen – is one in which the principle that children are capable of living within civil societies, and that they are honorary citizens, serves as both a rallying point for many organisations, networks and groups, and as the focus of conduct and policymaking in the fields of government, law and civil society. Although the emancipation of children as full citizens is bitterly contested – there is plenty of resistance from government administrators, paediatricians, social workers, nurses, day care centre employees, school teachers and child therapists – there are also many indications that the release of children from bondage, into civil society and its political and legal entitlements, is now under way. The old dogmas of quarantine and welfare regulation are crumbling; it is as if civil societies and governments have decided that they cannot live with the incivility that they formerly inflicted on children. The consequence is not only that the dualism between children and civil society becomes blurred in many people's minds; the power-ridden division between child and adult becomes questionable, and is publicly questioned, with politically unsettling effects. (John Keane, 2008: 16)