Roy Childs

For many years, Childs suffered from difficulties due to obesity. In later years when he lived in New York City, he sometimes weighed over 400 pounds and rarely left his apartment. Childs went to the Pritikin Center in Miami, Florida to take part in a weight loss program. While there, he fell and was taken to a local hospital, where he died on May 22, 1992 at the age of 43.

Childs edited the magazine Libertarian Review from 1977 until it folded in 1981. He was also a research fellow and later a policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 1982 to 1984. Childs's most visible public role was as lead book reviewer for Laissez Faire Books in which he produced a number of memorable short essays. He held this position from 1984 until his death.

In his essay "An Open Letter to Ayn Rand", Childs rejected Objectivism as being true libertarianism, asserting that the establishment of government is in violation of self-ownership and the non-aggression principle. In the 1960s, Childs endorsed anarcho-capitalism, but he later expressed doubts about anarchism. In the 1960s, Ayn Rand wrote an essay entitled "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business". Childs responded with an essay entitled "Big Business and the Rise of American Statism", writing: "To a large degree it has been and remains big businessmen who are the fountainheads of American statism". In 1982, Childs gave a lecture at the Libertarian Party of New York convention on the origins and consequences of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy and stated his opposition to an interventionist foreign policy.

Roy Alan Childs Jr. (January 4, 1949 – May 22, 1992) was an American libertarian essayist and critic.

Childs was born in Buffalo, New York on January 4, 1949. After graduating high school, he enrolled at the State University of New York at Buffalo with the intention of eventually becoming a college professor. While there, he was offered a full scholarship to attend Rampart College in Larkspur, Colorado, an unaccredited college established by Robert LeFevre to educate students on libertarian views. However, LeFevre's project collapsed soon after Childs arrived and by the fall of 1968 was back at SUNY Buffalo.