Is there one childhood or are there many? Were they over-ambitious or just naive in thinking they could draw up a single code for all the world’s children? Those who drafted the CRC seemed to assume there was a universal understanding of childhood. They should have realised very soon that this was not so when they couldn’t even agree when childhood began and when it ended. On the beginning of childhood, they sought refuge in an uncomfortable compromise which saw the Preamble recognising pre-natal life, and Article 1 on insisting on a definition of ‘child’ which says this begins on birth and not before. But without this compromise the Convention may have fallen at the first hurdle. Two interests, two dignities, are in conflict.