Understanding childhood, including the one you accompany

France adopted in 2024 a law on children's image rights. It writes into law a tension between two parental prerogatives.

France legislated in 2018 and several countries followed. Available evaluations are few, dated, and their results diverge.

A third of two-year-olds were in school in France in the early 2000s, against a small fraction today. Evaluations explain that movement poorly.

A concern report and a referral to the prosecutor do not go to the same place and do not have the same effects. The confusion produces unusable figures.

France changed its organisation twice in five years. The data invoked on either side often bear on different questions.

It is the most widely ratified international treaty in the world. Its concrete legal reach varies sharply by country, and in France by which article is invoked.

The French scheme was born inside private firms before being generalised by law. That origin explains part of its present shape, including what is still argued about.

Sweden legislated in 1979, France in 2019. More than sixty states have followed, and evaluating these laws poses particular methodological difficulties.

Comparing leave duration across countries produces rankings that circulate widely. They conflate entitlements whose pay, transferability and take-up have nothing in common.

In France the obligation starts at three, and has done since 2019. Elsewhere in Europe it starts at four, five, six or seven, and those gaps do not mean what one assumes.