The Social Values Of Past And Present 1 . Families 2 . Tribes And Other Social Institutions 3 . The State 4 . For example, take child labor laws.
Restrictive legislation is barred largely by family poverty and lack of schools.
So, in historical terms, this is a very recent trend in our system of values. For most of the rest of human history, the concept that young people needed to be protected from working for a living would have been laughed at, as it still is today in much of the world. Only the wealthiest nations can afford the luxury of banning most labor by children. Similarly, women were considered to be virtually property, or, to some degree at least, slaves of their husbands, until relatively recently. Previously, virtually all of a woman's property was given over to her husband, usually automatically, upon marriage.