Humane Intervention: A Literary Insight into the Welfare of British Children through a Reading of The Children Act

Abstract

This essay discusses the birth of the Children Act 1989 and the ethos of this statute by reading Ian McEwan’s novel, The Children Act, published in 2014. The aim of this paper is to review how the law came into being as well as to examine the facets involved in its application. The novel derives its cases from real-life anecdotes, relying on information offered by a few judges working in the Family Division of the Royal Justice of Court such as Sir Alan Ward and Sir James Munby. In reading two of the cases written in the novel, this paper seeks to articulate that the primary concern of the Children Act is towards children’s welfare and that the philosophy of welfare is social. This issue is elucidated when two girls involved in one of the cases may be segregated from a life that the majority of girls the same age would enjoy and thrive in. The Children Act gives enough reason to a judge, Fiona in this novel to allow them a prosperous life for as long as they so choose. Another application that is precipitated is that dignity is not more important than a life when a teenage boy under the age of 18 decides to cost his life in order to live for a principle. It becomes absolutely clear that welfare is concerned with life before it considers principle, whether religious or otherwise. What this essay finds particularly of note is that a law-abiding judge can be humane to a plaintiff (the teenage boy) and serve the boy not only with the execution of her legal duties but also seemingly with a distanced motherly support, even if this support is transient.