S. Matthew Liao: The Right to Be Loved

In The Right to Be Loved, author S. Matthew Liao explores a moral principle to govern the parent-child relationship. He starts by laying down a foundation of why children should be rightholders. He explores the moral, legal, and political discourse among international and national scholars pertaining to children and rights; and he concludes that children are rightholders and as such have the right to be loved. Throughout the book, Liao carefully examines a variety of sources from philosophers, psychologists, and international human rights to argue his premise. He claims that the idea of children possessing the right to be loved is not new; in fact, it is a universal one declared in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Children’s Bill of Rights as formulated by the White House Conference on Children and Youth, and other national and international charitable foundations with a focus on children. The purpose of this book is to develop and justify the claim that every child has a right to be loved. …