Our democracy is based on the premise that groups of people will stand up for their own interests and rights. but generally speaking children and young people are not in the position to do this. Children are a large but uniquely uninfluential sector of the population. They are particularly powerless and vulnerable, and are generally highly restricted in both the extent to which they can take decisions about their own lives and the extent to which they can participate in society's overall decision making processes. Martin Rosenbaum and Peter Newell Taking Children Seriously (1991)