it attends to its children—their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they were born.”(UNICEF Report The Children Left Behind (2010)
If that is the standard by which a nation’s standing in the world is judged then
we in the United States need to seriously reevaluate our claim of being “the greatest country in the world.”
When it comes to caring for the well-being our children we are far from being “the greatest country in the world. “On four of the six indicators of childhood well-being measured in that UNICEF report: material well-being, health and safety, educational well-being, family and peer relationships, behavior and risks and subjective well-being, the United States ranked last or almost last. The only indicator in which the United States wasn’t near the bottom of the pack was in educational well-being. We ranked 12th
out of 21 nations and that isn’t anything to brag about. UNICEF had insufficient data to rate the US in the area of subjective well-being. Those who wish to look at the full report can follow this link: http://www.unicefirc.org/publications/pdf/rc9_eng.pdf
When we look at how little we attend to the well-being of many of our nation’s children
we should be beating our chests and saying “mea culpa” instead of shouting “we are the
greatest”. Here are some more unsettling facts about our failure as a nation to protect the health, safety and material security of our children.
Currently 21 % of children in the US live in poverty (National Center of Children in
Poverty) and the US has the largest percentage of permanently poor of any country in the industrialized world (OECD report cited by David Berliner in “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” 2005). Think of what living in poverty—not to mention permanent poverty—does to children.
Think of the health risks they encounter in dilapidated housing and in deteriorating, dangerous neighborhoods. Three immediate health risks come to mind: lead poisoning, increased incidence of asthma and victimization by violent crime. Additionally there is constant exposure to drug and alcohol abuse in many of these neighborhoods. A recent CNN Health report described how an epidemic abuse of prescription drugs in one rural Kentucky county is leaving thousands of children orphans.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/health/kentuckyoverdoses/index.html?hpt=hp_bn12
The report does not specifically mention poverty as a contributing factor, but data from the government census bureau indicates that the average medium income of a family in that county is $27,000. 29.2% of the population of the county lives below the poverty
level. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/21/21203.html
Mea culpa is a formal apology or acknowledgment of guilt. As citizens of one of the
richest nations in the world, one that allows 1 in 5 of its children to live in poverty, we should be shouting mea culpa and getting about the business of righting this unconscionable wrong. Each of us needs to be actively involved in making sure that as
a nation we do a much better job of caring for our children. Now is the time to do it. With two wars winding down and our politicians in the midst of debating what programs government will and will not support in the future, we must turn our attention to a long neglected war truly worth fighting—the war on poverty.
On another front, while the memory of the Newtown, Connecticut Elementary School
tragedy is still fresh in our minds, it is time for us to deal with the issue of gun violence and how it is affecting children in our country—not to mention adults. While violent incidents like the one in Newtown Elementary may be infrequent, once young people are
beyond the boundaries of the school the threat to them of injury or death from gun violence rises significantly. Here are the statistics provided by the Children’s Defense Fund’s report: Protect Children Not Guns in 2012:
· in 2008-2009 5,740 children or teens were killed by guns—one every three
hours
· during the same time period 34,387 children suffered non-fatal gun injuries— one every 31 minutes
A report by John Hopkins Center for Gun Control points out that the homicide rate in the United States is seven times higher than the rate of 22 other higher income countries
combined and that the victims (in the US) are“disproportionally young.”
Aside from the moral responsibility we should all feel for ensuring the well-being of all our country’s children, there is a practical reason for doing this. It is captured in Aesop’s Fable The Trees and the Axe.
A man came into the forest and asked the trees to provide him with a handle for his axe.
The trees agreed to his request and gave him a young ash tree. As soon as the man had fitted the new handle into his axe, he began to use it to cut down the noblest giants of the forest. An old oak bemoaning the destruction of his companions said to a nearby cedar: “If we had only looked after the well-being of that young ash, we might have preserved
our own well-being and stood for ages.”
If we truly want to ensure the future greatness of our nation, we must do a better job of
looking after the well-being its children. They are its future. We have a lot of work to do.