Vulnerability should not eclipse agency: Children’s perspectives on their own lives.

Drawing on research with children, this chapter suggests that children are not inevitably vulnerable, but that adults’ perceptions of that – often different from children’s own – can work to render them vulnerable and/or undermine their enjoyment of their human rights. It also questions whether an approach that conceptualises both adults and children as vulnerable might impact children differently and disproportionately, displacing the dedicated gaze on children’s rights and interests, reinforcing existing paternalistic responses to children, and undermining their ability to shape and inform their own lives.