The frequency of this "news" actually may limit its impact. We are enured or numbed by its repetition. Is this the culture that so proudly proclaimed itself benevolently "child-centered" and the twentieth century "the century of the child"? Is this the land of "equal opportunity," if not for adults but then for their children?
Despite long-standing myths and cliches, the answer is a resounding "No." Such ideals bear at best a very partial relationship to the complicated, multiple realities of young persons' lives and life-chances, whether yesterday or today. KERA-TV Channel 13's original program, "First Steps," shows this movingly for the very young and their caregivers.
Major myths and ideals about the young in the United States constitute what two students of public policy so aptly label "broken promises: how Americans fail their children." The myths, which speak to incomplete, partial realities if not out-and-out falsehoods, are powerful. They shape our images of the young and guide our thinking and actions, individually and collectively, privately and politically. Time and time again, myths prove more powerful and more resilient than the only occasionally compelling facts, statistics, or personal testimonies.
What are these myths that substitute for meaningful ideals and so often block needed social and political actions?
First is the notion that Americans love their children. All children-who are seen as the reasons for our private and public sacrifices and the guarantors of our future. Regardless of individuals' actions, the record of past and present is best described as one of ambivalence, not love, toward the young. This is true for our own but especially for "other people's children," about whom we are insensitive, unprotective, publicly mean-spirited, and cheap.
Second is the idea that our own children, along with our own families, are private, sanctified, inviolable by the State or public sphere. "Other people's children" are not. Other people may be perceived as "failing" in their duties and obligations to their children and their fellow citizens, draining the public purse. Only their families are open to public scrutiny, susceptible to intervention. Only their children are candidates for removal to institutions, "foster homes," or juvenile injustice system.
Third, the myth of a romanticized, sentimentalized, happy family-centered past in which children were truly loved and protected contrasts starkly with images of their recent decline and present-day plight. Exaggerated notions of teen suicides and superficial understanding of teen pregnancies join with evidence of poverty, immorality, and abuse. Together they obstruct, on the one hand, knowledge of a past with high levels of child and parent death, frequent ill health, much less education, authoritarian fathers, greater prejudice against women and minorities. On the other hand, evidence of the overall historical gains among the young in American society passes with little notice. Such gains include, for example, levels of health, longevity, wealth or material comfort, and education.
Ironically, the power of present-day images and the myths on which they rest detract attention and effort away from today's most serious flashpoints. These are: the interlocking poverty of single mothers and their children; the plight of many pregnant teenage girls; malnourishment and low birth-weight of babies (who often die in infancy) whose mothers receive inadequate medical care and advice; the lack of jobs for young men of color especially in cities; and the abuse of drugs and alcohol. The racial, class, ethnic, and gender identities most common to these youth simultaneously ensure their condemnation and inadequate attention.
The human consequences of these prevailing myths surround us. They influence most concretely the quality of the lives lived by the disadvantaged young, "other people's children." But they also influence the quality of all our lives. The myth of love for children results, on the one hand, in uncaring complacency that leads to self-satisfied neglect. Shortened lives, cheaply and discontentedly lived are extremely costly to the public sphere and to each of us as tax-payers and citizens. On the other hand, the sense of our own superiority over others and their children widens social divisions in a divided society. The myth of children and families as private spheres prevents needed protection to the truly vulnerable and real equality of services. The myth of a better past only contributes to negative, destructive criticism of the present. That in turn precludes fair evaluation of the diverse needs of young persons in widely different circumstances.
Other myths, which include the work of professional child-care workers and psychological experts, and the scope of the State's authority, add to today's confusion. A balanced assessment, desperately needed now, is hard to find. It does not hide today's awesome problems but places them in a different light than most commentaries and many professional experts--who make their way in the marketplace from crisis to crisis by constructing and reconstructing stages of human development, and novel treatments of them.
New, calm clarity comes not from crisis-mongering or the instant wisdom of the experts. It comes from emphasizing that growing up always has been hard. It comes from grasping the multiple realities among those growing up and their varying circumstances. It comes from seeing their differences and their developments flexibly. And, in the end it comes from constructing powerful new myths and new images better suited to the young and their care-givers in the late twentieth century. That end constitutes a new beginning.
24 April 1992