Conversations about youth health often focus on parents, educators, governments and health-care providers, leaving out young people.
But history tells a different story, explains Kristine Alexander, associate professor of History and Director of the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History: From vaccination and public health to sexual and reproductive health, young people have long sought out information, formed their own opinions and played an active role in decisions affecting their well-being.
“While it’s tempting to see children and youth as powerless and vulnerable beings who need to be protected by adults, young people actually have a long history of wanting to learn about and participate in decisions that affect their bodies and well-being,” she says.
Alexander is leading a team examining the history of childhood and youth voices in Canada, including the ways young people have navigated questions of health, information and autonomy.
Alexander and Wilson Institute and Allied Medical Services postdoctoral fellow Derek Cameron explore what history can teach us about young people’s role in decisions about their own health.
In May 2027, the Wilson Institute will host a workshop on the history and political of parental rights. This event will connect researchers and practitioners from across Canada and internationally to examine how debates surrounding young people, families, education and health care have evolved over time.
What does history tell us about how youth have engaged with vaccination and other health issues? And what can we learn from this?
Young people have never been simply passive regarding decisions about their health. In debates over vaccination, sexual and reproductive health, and other forms of health care, young people have actively interpreted, questioned, and sometimes resisted the views of their parents.
Derek’s research on the children of Canadian anti-vaccine activists, for example, grew from the discovery that some children raised in strongly anti-vaccine households later chose to be vaccinated as adults. Children raised in vaccine-hesitant households took parents to court to receive vaccines over objections or simply bided their time until adulthood to seek out vaccination.
Similarly, historical evidence from the 1970s shows teenagers seeking out birth-control information independently, circumventing parental restrictions, and advocating for clearer and more accessible health education.
These examples complicate assumptions that children simply accept their parents’ health beliefs, while demonstrating that young people have their own perspectives, sources of knowledge, and strategies for navigating competing health claims.
How have tensions between parental authority and youth autonomy evolved over time?
This is a big question that can be answered in a few different ways. First, we need to account for individual and cultural variation: Even in the same time period, families can have very different expectations in terms of parental authority and the autonomy of young people. Gender is also important here, as girls — across time and across cultures — have tended to be subjected to higher degrees of parental surveillance and regulation.
One of the clearest ways we can see change over time is through the development of children’s rights. The idea that children are a distinct group with specific human rights is a product of the 20th century. It was first articulated in the 1924 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child. A response to the well-documented suffering and starvation of children in some parts of Europe during and after the First World War, it focused on young people’s right to protection and care.
The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child expanded that vision. Its most significant sections are Articles 12 and 13, which articulate children’s rights to express their views in all matters affecting them, to be heard in judicial and administrative proceedings that affect them, and to enjoy the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds.”
While these are powerful statements in theory, they are unevenly applied in practice. The United States, for instance, signed but never ratified the UNCRC, and judges in different national contexts sometimes choose not to take young people’s preferences into account.
What does the idea of the mature minor tell us about young people’s capacity to make informed decisions?
The idea of mature minors recognizes that age alone is a bad predictor of who’s capable of making informed decisions about their own health. Rather than drawing a hard line at age 18, it asks whether a young person understands what’s being decided and can reason through its consequences.
Canadian courts have grappled with this tension. In Chmiliar v. Chmiliar (2001), a judge accepted that a 13-year-old was capable of forming her own view on vaccination. In this case, the youth opposed the vaccines her father wanted her to receive.
In other cases, however, young people have used mature minor cases to obtain vaccines over their parents’ opposition.
What lessons can parents, educators and health-care providers take from this history as students return to school?
One of the most important lessons is that listening to young people matters. History shows that children and youth are often more engaged with health questions than adults assume.
When they have access to reliable information and opportunities to ask questions, they can make thoughtful decisions and become active participants in their own well-being.