New Zealand children in the 1990s: beneficiaries of New Right economic policy?

This paper questions the extent to which New Zealand children have benefited from New Right economic policies and argues that the invisibility of children, the role of public concern about children and the social construction of childhood are factors which have facilitated implementation of these changes. Attention is drawn to the ways in which the personal and the political spheres intersect in children's lives. Rather than focusing on either the micro level of intervention in the lives of individual children or the macro level of societal change it is argued that the dualism itself must be transcended in order to move forward from the current position. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.