According to anthony platt, author of the child savers: the invention of delinquency, the progressives were not children, but denying them what?

Civil liberties.

Explanation:

Anthony Platt's classic work (1977), The Child Saver The Invention of Delinquency is a study that describes the "child-save movement" advocated by progressives, not as an attempt to liberate and dignify children, but as a form of denying the civil liberties of these children. According to the author, child-save movement is a punitive, romantic, and invasive effort to control the lives of poor urban children and adolescents to perpetuate the dependency status of subordinate classes.

The child-save movement consisted of the creation of reformatory systems, the practice of juvenile offenders, and the juvenile court system. According to Platt, using this discourse of victimization, this movement was not a humanitarian enterprise in favor of children, but was a form of social control, idealized by elites, aiming to subject a population to the demands of the emerging capitalist system.