It Takes a Village
Page 29
Creating a framework for service: In the last five years, we have seen an upsurge in volunteerism. Applications to Teach for America, which recruits graduates for underserved urban and rural areas, hit almost 19,000 this year, nearly triple the number in 2000; in 2006, the Peace Corps took 7,810 volunteers—the largest number in thirty years—from more than 11,500 applicants in 2005, up more than 20 percent over the year 2000; and AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), which pairs young people with nonprofit organizations, has had a 50 percent jump in applicants since 2004. (Beth Walton, “Volunteer Rates Hit Record Numbers,” USA Today, July 7, 2006, nat. ed., p. 1a.) This year, I introduced legislation to create and fund a U.S. Public Service Academy modeled after the nation’s military service academies. The school would provide an education to 5,000 undergraduates, and graduates would be required to work five years in public service.
It may be that women will achieve: A Radcliffe survey conducted in 2000 found that more than 70 percent of men under forty said they would give up pay to spend more time with their families, and 82 percent said family comes first. (Radcliffe Public Policy Center, Life’s Work: Generational Attitudes Toward Work and Life Integration, 2000.) According to new research by Professor Suzanne Bianchi for the Russell Sage Foundation, the time married fathers spend on child care had more than doubled since 1965, from 2.6 hours a week to 6.5 hours. (Robert Pear, "Married and Single Parents Spending More Time With Children, Study Finds," New York Times, October 17, 2006.)
Child care facilities for infants and toddlers: A 2006 study of Quebec’s universal child-care system found that children under five in full-time center-based care showed greater rates of aggression, anxiety, and developmental delay. (Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan, “Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 11832, June 2006). However, studies of Abecedarian and other high-quality, intensive early learning programs have demonstrated dramatic positive results for low-income children. (See Heckman et al. above, in note for p. 50.) Unfortunately, high-quality day care isn’t available to everyone—nationally known pediatric specialists T. Berry Brazelton and Stanley Greenspan estimate that only 10 percent of American children had access to truly high-quality day care—and many parents can’t afford to stay home to take care of their children. (T. Berry Brazelton and Stanley I. Greenspan, The Irreducible Needs of Children, 2000, p. xiii, from a 1995 University of Colorado study.) I proposed the Choices in Childcare Act to allow lower-income parents who receive government support for child care to use the subsidies to defray the cost of caring for their young children themselves.
Education is fundamental to our country’s future: The standards and accountability movement has grown dramatically over the last decade. The No Child Left Behind Act became law, and it has laid bare the problems in many of our poorest, worst-performing schools. We can no longer say that we didn’t know that these schools were failing some of our most vulnerable kids. To improve the quality of education, we need to improve instruction in the classroom. Nationwide, two million teachers will leave teaching over the next decade. New York City already loses 30 percent more math teachers and 22 percent more science teachers than it certifies every year. In 2001, I proposed the National Teacher Corps, which brings teachers into the classroom, and a new initiative that would provide more schools with strong principals. Both became law.
Children themselves report: A 2004 study for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that teens who watch a lot of television with sexual content are more likely to initiate intercourse in the following year. This was true for girls and boys, regardless of race. Overexposure to highly sexed television made kids act older—twelve-year-olds behaved like fourteen-year-olds. (Rebecca L. Collins et al., “Watching Sex on Television Predicts Adolescent Initiation of Sexual Behavior,” Pediatrics, vol. 114 (2004) pp. 280–89.) Another study published in the journal Pediatrics showed that boys and girls, across all races and economic groups, who listened to sexually degrading lyrics were more likely to start sexual experimentation sooner. (Steven C. Martino et al., “Exposure to Degrading Versus Nondegrading Music Lyrics and Sexual Behavior,” Pediatrics, vol. 118(2006), pp. 430–41.) While this research is critical, there are still more questions about the effects of media on our children, especially young children. I’ve introduced CAMRA—the Children and Media Research Advancement Act. The bill, which recently passed the Senate, coordinates and funds new federal research on the effects of viewing and using electronic media, including television, computers, video games, and the Internet, on children’s cognitive, social, physical, and psychological development.
Whether, and under what circumstances, the violence people see on television: A 2005 study by researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine showed that playing violent video games triggers unusual brain activity among kids who are most vulnerable to aggression and misbehavior. (Vincent P. Matthews et al., “Media Violence Exposure and Frontal Lobe Activation Measured by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Aggressive and Nonaggressive Adolescents,” Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography, vol. 29, no. 9 (2005), pp. 287–92.) Violent video games are getting into the hands of our kids at younger and younger ages. The National Institute on Media and the Family’s 2003 study found that 50 percent of boys between the ages of seven and fourteen successfully purchased M-rated video games (games appropriate only for people aged seventeen or older), and an astonishing 87 percent of boys play M-rated games. Furthermore, nearly a quarter of retailers in the study don’t even understand the ratings they are supposed to enforce, and only half of the stores train employees in the use of the ratings. (David Walsh, et al., “Eighth Annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card,” National Institute on Media and the Family, vol. 8 [December 2003].) Yet, video game makers continue to push the envelope. A year ago, the makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, sold a game containing graphic pornography that anyone could unlock with instructions widely available on the Internet. I called attention to these games, and because of the public outrage that followed, they were pulled off store shelves.
But spurred on by cultural messages: James McNeal, the nation’s most influential estimator of the size of the children’s market, believes that the amount of advertising and marketing dollars directed at children rose more than one hundred times between 1983 and 2004. (Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, 2005 [paperback], p. 21). Too many kids are getting the message that our worth is measured by what we can buy. A recent national survey found that more than a third of all children aged nine to fourteen would rather spend time buying things than doing almost anything else, more than a third “really like kids that have special games or clothes,” more than half agree that “when you grow up, the more money you have, the happier you are,” and 62 percent say that “the only kind of job I want when I grow up is one that gets me a lot of money.” (Marvin E. Goldberg et al., “Understanding Materialism Among Youth,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 278–88.)
Even workers’ jobs may be sacrificed: Today, our globalized economy has seen an increase in the number of jobs outsourced to other countries. Goldman Sachs has estimated that 400,000 to 600,000 professional services jobs (or about 2–3 percent of employment in that sector) were offshored in the first years of the decade. (Andrew Tilton, “The ‘Giant Sucking Sound’ Is Fading,” Goldman Sachs US Economics Analyst, March 19, 2004.) Goldman estimates that another 6 million jobs could be lost over the following ten years. (Andrew Tilton, “Offshoring: Where Have All the Jobs Gone?,” Goldman Sachs US Economics Analyst, September 19, 2003.) Former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Blinder projects that 42 million jobs, or 25–35 percent of all services could be outsourced in the next several decades. (Alan S. Blinder, “Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, March-April 2006.)
There are additional actions w
e can take: The last minimum-wage increase was in 1996, when Congress and the president raised it to $5.15 an hour. However, the impact of the 1996–97 increase has been eroded by inflation. (Economic Policy Institute, Minimum Wage: EPI Issue Guide, August 2006.) Adjusting for inflation, the minimum wage is at its lowest point in fifty years. (Center for Economic and Policy Research, Federal Minimum Wage at Lowest Point in 50 Years, June 19, 2006.) While minimum-wage workers have not had a single raise, Congress has given itself $31,600 in pay raises. In the Senate, I’ve proposed blocking Congress from giving itself another pay raise until it lifts wages for workers.
Government has to do its part: After this book was written, my husband and the Congress not only balanced the budget for the first time in a decade, but began to run federal budget surpluses. In 2000, the Congressional Budget Office projected federal budget surpluses for the foreseeable future. However, after 2000, our federal budget went from record surpluses to record deficits again. In 1996, our national debt was $5.2 trillion; as of September 2006, our national debt has reached $8.4 trillion. (1996 U.S. Treasury, “Historical Debt Outstanding,” 2006, http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm; U.S. Treasury, “The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It,” 2006, http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm.) Today, every baby born in America starts life with $28,000 of our national debt—a birth tax that is higher than it has ever been in our nation’s history. (House Budget Committee, “Your Share of the National Debt, 2006,” extrapolated from the number of households in: Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Cheryl Hill Lee, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60–231, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 2006; U.S. Treasury, “The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It.”)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT TAKES A village to bring a book into the world, as anyone who has written one knows. Many people have helped me to complete this one, sometimes without even knowing it. They are so numerous that I will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually, for fear that I might leave someone out. Instead, I would like to thank those who encouraged and advised, read and reacted; those who typed and retyped, edited, copyedited, proofread, designed, set type, and printed; and those who kept the engines of daily life humming the whole time. The opinions expressed in this book are my own, as is the responsibility for any errors it may contain. Yet I am indebted for my ideas—and for any contribution they make to public and private debates and agendas—to a long line of family and friends, teachers and classmates, colleagues and mentors; to the many tireless and often unheralded experts and advocates whose work I have been privileged to know; and most of all, to the millions of families and children who are building tomorrow’s villages.
Index
A&E Network
Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, and the First Amendment (Minow and LeMay)
abduction, child
Abecedarian Project abortion
Cairo Document and
teenagers and
Abrahamson, Shirley
accidents:
automobile
household
Addams, Jane
adolescence, see teenagers
adoption
child’s best interest in
foster care and
interracial
Adoption and Safe Families Act of
advertising
children targeted by
affirmative living
Africa
African Americans
in Abecedarian project
see also race, racism
aggression
see also violence
Agriculture Department, U.S.,
Algebra Project
Allen, Jennifer
Allstate
AMBER alerts
American Academy of Pediatrics,
American Bar Association
American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care,
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
American Library Association
American Medical Association
American Psychological
Association
AmeriCorps
AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in
Service to America)
amygdala
Angelou, Maya
Annenberg Washington Program in
Communications Studies
Anti-Defamation League
“anxious class,”
Apollo, Nicole
Arkansas
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families
Arkansas Children’s Hospital
Asian Americans
Asmara, Eritrea
Association of Booksellers for Children
AT&T
Atwater, Lee
Australia
Austria
authoritarian discipline
authoritative discipline
automobile accidents
Avance program
Baby Richard case
Baby Safety Shower How-To Kit,
Bangladesh
Bateson, Mary Catherine
Battered Child Syndrome
Beals, Diane
Bebout, Mike
Bebout, Ryan
bedtime rituals
Bell Curve, The (Murray and Herrnstein)
Belle, Aunt
Ben & Jerry’s
Bennett, William
Berger, David
Beth Israel Hospital (Boston),
Big Brothers
Big Sisters
Billings, Mont
Bill Nye, the Science Guy (TV show)
Bill of Rights
Black History Month
Blinder, Alan
Blythe, William
Blythe, William Jefferson, see
Clinton, Bill
Boyer, Ernest L
Boy Scouts
Boys Nation
Boys State
“Boy Who Cried Whale, The,”
Brady Bill of
brain
amygdala of
cognitive development and
as computer
emotional development and
neocortex of
synapses of
Brazelton, T. Berry
Breakey, Gail
breast-feeding
Bronfenbrenner, Urie
Brown, Ann
Bumpers, Betty
Burke, James
Bush, George
business
advertising and
child care as concern of
consumer culture of
corporate restructuring of
downsizing of
education and
enlightened practice of
free market system of
government and
inequality of incomes and
modern economy in
outsourcing and
parents and
tobacco industry and
Business Enterprise Trust
cable television
Cairo Document
Caldwell, Bettye
Califano, Joseph A., Jr
California
Call to Character, A (Greer and Kohl)
Camden, N.J
Camel cigarettes
Cameron Gulbransen Kids and
Campfire Boys
Campfire Girls
CAMRA (Children and Media Research Advancement Act)
capitalism
Carnegie Corporation
Carnegie Council on Children
Carter, Rosalynn
Casey Journalism Center
Cassidy, Edith Valeria Grisham
Cassidy, James Eldridge
CBS
Census of
Center for Media and Public Affairs
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA)
; Centers for Disease Control
Chaffee, John H
character building
discipline and, see discipline
gratitude and
protectiveness and
rites of passage and
role-playing and
sex education and
substance abuse and
teenagers and
“terrible twos” and
“character education,”
charter schools
Cherry, Diana
Cherry, John
Chevron
Chicago, Ill
Chicago, University of
Chicago Tribune,
child abuse
childbirth and pregnancy, see pregnancy and childbirth
child care
affordable
American attitudes toward
business community interest in
choice of
education and
federal role in
in France
for infants and toddlers
need for
as policy issue
quality of
Smart Start initiative and
state regulation of
variety of
workers in
workplace policy and
Child Care Action Campaign
Child Care and Development block grant
Child Development-Community Policing Program
child poverty
“childproofing,”
Children and Media Research
Advancement Act (CAMRA)
Children Now
Children’s Defense Fund
logo of
Children’s Letters to God
Children’s Miracle Network
Children’s Television Act of
Children’s Television Workshop
Chile, University of
Choices in Childcare Act of
Christian Coalition
Christmas Carol, A (Dickens)
church, community role of
Churchill, Winston
Citibank
City Year
Civilian Conservation Corps
“civil society,”
Civil War, U.S
Clean Air Act
Clean Water Act
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Plain Dealer