Prescriptive statements are what rights, responsibilities and duties should apply to a defined group of people. UN declarations are prescriptive statements referring to what ought to be the case for human beings, and the CRC is a prescriptive statement specifically aimed at children. The rights of the child include both participation rights and protection rights. Participation rights are the rights to something. They are primarily social and political in nature and include, for example, the right to freedom of religion, association, education, and expression.
Protective rights are rights to be protected from something.
These rights include protection from abusive or degrading treatment, protection from capital punishment, and protection from the denial of education or health care. Children have had precarious and often conflicting rights provided through national governments as each nation has struggled with an evolving definition of childhood and the individual human status of the child. In the early history of the United States, children were the property of their fathers and, for the most part, had no individual status in the eyes of the law. Later, as the country underwent rapid industrialization and experienced an increased birth rate, laws were established that directly intervened in the role of the family by limiting child labor, mandating immunizations, and establishing public education for children. Current legislation still starts from a premise of parental rights even though there is a trend toward recognizing the individual status of the child.