I should be going to bed but I wanted to direct whatever little bit of audience I still have to two related articles. The first, from The Nation (subscription required, but here’s the interesting bits) regarding a new Unicef report, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries:
Congratulations: Children in the United States do not have the worst quality of life in the developed world. That honor is held by Britain–with the United States a close second. America’s infant mortality rate is exceeded only by Hungary’s; New Zealand is the only country where more people under 19 meet violent deaths each year. On teenage motherhood, we’re way ahead: forty-six births for every 1,000 girls between 15 and 19. The closest challenger (New Zealand again) can manage only thirty. Children born in the richest nation on earth are also the most likely to be noticeably poorer than their neighbors: 21.7 percent of America’s children live in households whose income is less than half the national median. Britain, at 16.2 percent, comes second in the inequality sweepstakes.
[...]
The study shows that the two countries with the greatest economic inequality are also failing their children in less tangible ways. British children reported the worst family and peer relationships and the highest incidence overall of risky behavior (smoking, drinking and unprotected sex); American children ranked third from the bottom (above Britain and Poland) in terms of their personal feelings of well-being. Sure, American adolescents drink and smoke less than kids in some other countries. But the cost of the right’s attempt to meet teenage sexuality with moralizing and repression rather than education is obvious in the teenage pregnancy rates. The country that came out best overall in the study was the Netherlands, known for its traditions of openness and tolerance.
The areas where American children fare worse than most–infant mortality, low birth weight, early childbearing, family instability and child poverty–are all directly related to the status of women. As Ruth Rosen writes in this issue, American women are still underpaid; still working double shifts; still shouldering on their own the burden of care for children and the elderly; still denied the right to control their fertility; still seen as a “special interest group” rather than half the nation. It is incredible that these things still need saying more than a generation after the rebirth of the women’s movement. If the other half can’t be made to see that women’s rights are vital for the whole community, the effects of gender inequality on children of both sexes might at least offer a compelling argument.
[...]
But at least we can afford massive tax cuts and an immoral war.
The second is more narrowly focused on child care and is also at The Nation, but it is a non-subscription article so I will just post this minor excerpt and encourage you to follow the link.
It is as though Americans are trapped in a time warp, still convinced that women should and will care for children, the elderly, homes and communities. But of course they can’t, now that most women have entered the workforce. In 1950 less than a fifth of mothers with children under age 6 worked in the labor force. By 2000 two-thirds of these mothers worked in the paid labor market.
Both articles underline the disassociation in American politics with true family values. Not the faux values proposed by the Republicans or the rhetoric from the Democrats. These are the values that American families care about. Or at least they would if anyone told them there was another way.
