Children have been separated from their families for generations – why Trump's policy was different
After weeks of mounting pressure, Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 to stop his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border of the US, writes . Putting the policy into a wider historical context of state-sanctioned policies of child separation helps to understand why some aspects of it were remarkably distinctive – and caused such international outrage.
From the closing decades of the 19th century, an array of policies emerged across the Anglophone world which challenged assumptions about parents’ inalienable rights to their children. A transnational child protection movement led to the formation of child protection societies, beginning with the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1875. New legislation followed in the UK, Canada and Australia allowing the removal of children from parents on grounds of cruelty or neglect.
