There’s a saying I like: “There’s no such thing as other people’s children.” I like it because I believe it’s true. We might consider that our collective duty as adults on the planet is to look after the children ~ all the children. It’s also unconscionable to hold any child accountable for any lack or fault someone might assess on the parents’ part. As a therapist and teacher, I emphasize that blaming parents (which often leads to withholding help) does not lead to solutions; even while we hold parents accountable for their choices, our focus can be on asking for each child’s sake, “What does this child and family need to be healthy and well?”
Much longitudinal research has been done to show (as if we couldn’t guess it on our own) that providing all families of newborns with the resources, support, and services they need to be able to feed, clothe, shelter and nurture their child, and to have access to quality medical care and early-childhood education, results in a myriad of positive results: less domestic violence, less physical illness, less mental illness, higher school attendance rates, better grades, higher graduation rates, less delinquency and criminality, more family involvement with neighbors and community, and more – all of which benefit community and society as a whole in various significant ways.
No one’s talking about buying families luxury goods, extraneous material things, or Disney tickets. We’re ultimately talking about – in many cases – holding families above the abyss, making it possible and more feasible for them to raise their child in a healthy way, alleviating some stress and some of the grave difficulties that interfere with a child’s optimal development.
So aside from the moral and ethical imperative to collectively care for babies and children, it also serves us in a very real, very practical sense to do so, for not only would we ensure more decent lives and a fair chance for less-privileged children, but we would engage in pro-active, preventative measures that benefit the family unit, the social network of that family, the wider community, and society en masse.
Our best bet in this regard is to elect people who have this imperative in mind, whose proposals and policies speak to the priority of ensuring that babies and children get what they need, no matter the circumstances. It ultimately saves money, as well as lives. It also saves our hearts.
