Nowadays children and adolescents are legally considered subjects who hold rights and who are in a peculiar development. Considering the bioecological theory as a theoretical reference, this study aims at understanding the perception of adolescents from urban and rural contexts about children and adolescents' rights. The subjects of the study were 47 adolescents of both genders, between 12 and 15 years old, from which 20 were elementary school students in the urban and 27 in the rural areas of an inner-city of RS. The questionnaire on the knowledge of rights was applied and analyzed quantitatively based on descriptive statistics and qualitatively, using content analysis. Adolescents from both contexts showed knowledge about some basic rights of children and adolescents, as the right of not working, of not being apart from their families and of having their opinions taken into account. Among the participants' perceptions we noticed conceptions socially shared over the centuries, such as the approval of physical punishment and poverty as a reason for being separated from their families. Thus, more discussions are necessary to announce the current laws, besides problematizing the rooted cultural conceptions.
Adolescents; Children and adolescents code; Developmental psychology; Policy making
