Talking about a post by Amitai Etzioni, Matt Yglesias observes

At any rate, I think it is true that most of the big liberal theories that have been articulated don’t do a terribly good job of explaining how and why we should treat children, so maybe this shot isn’t quite as cheap as I thought.

Let me immediately recommend my friend Tamar Schapiro’s paper ‘What is a Child?’ [link is to J-STOR], which appeared in Ethics 109 (4), 1999, pp.715-738. Read it all up. It’s good for you.