Essay 3 - SAGE Publications Inc...Essay 3 Conventional Wisdom Tells Us. . . Children Are Our Most...

Essay 3Conventional Wisdom

Tells Us . . . Children Are Our Most Precious Commodity

We frequently hear it said: Children are our future. They are ourmost valuable resource. Here, we present research suggestingotherwise. Children may be the most overlooked, the mostneglected segment of the population despite current talk offamily values and the future of American youth.

Children—who doesn’t love them? In the United States, we refer tochildren as “our nation’s future.” Our conventional wisdom celebrates

them as society’s most precious commodity. And national opinion pollsrepeatedly document that Americans consider children one of life’s truerewards. Witness how our popular icons—Madonna or Angelina Jolie—cancause a media frenzy over their efforts to adopt and garner that reward.Indeed, couples who want children but cannot have them are ensured thesympathies and support of their fellow members of society. In contrast, cou-ples who don’t want children frequently find themselves objects of contemptor suspicion.

Much of today’s political rhetoric is fueled by the cultural value Americaplaces on children. Citizens and elected officials are urged to “act now” inthe long-term interest of the nation’s youth. Politicians vow to cut today’s

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spending and spare our children and grand-children a troubled and debt-laden tomorrow.Many advocate curbing Social Security andMedicare costs so as to protect benefits forfuture generations. Global warming is fre-quently discussed with an eye to the envi-ronmental legacy we will leave our heirs.Such prescriptions underscore the impor-tance of children in our youth-orientedsociety.

Threats to our children can mobilizeAmerican sentiments in a way that fewother issues can. Consider some landmarkmoments of the past few decades thatjoined American citizens together in publicoutrage: the bombing of a federal build-ing in Oklahoma City; school shootingsat Columbine High School, “VirginiaTech,” or that one-room schoolhouse inPennsylvania’s Amish country; the AmberHagerman kidnapping, which inspired thecreation of the Amber Alert system; themurder and rape of Megan Kanka, whichresulted in Megan’s Law; or the sensationalkidnapping of Madeleine McCann,allegedly stolen from a hotel room whileher parents enjoyed dinner in the hotelrestaurant. In such instances, public out-

rage was fueled in large measure by the fact that these acts threatenedand/or took the lives of so many children.

Can we take the pro-child rhetoric of conventional wisdom at face value?How do our pro-child sentiments compare with the realities of Americanchildren’s lives? A review of worldwide infant mortality rates offers one per-spective on the matter. Infant mortality rates gauge the number of deaths per1,000 live births for children under one year of age. Such statistics representa commonly consulted measure, or social indicator, of a society’s behaviortoward its children. Social indicators are quantitative measures or indices ofsocial phenomena.

Despite the pro-child sentiments of American culture, the United Statestrails many other nations in the fight against infant mortality. To be sure,infant deaths typically are highest within less developed nations of the world

24——Culture

Photo 3.1 Copyright AnneGlassman.Reprinted bypermission ofAnne Glassman.

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community, such as Afghanistan, Liberia, Angola, or the Congo. Yet theU.S. infant mortality rate—6 deaths for every 1,000 live births—is compara-ble to that found in Cuba, Croatia, and Poland—nations with far less wealthor international power than the United States (see Figure 3.1). A variety ofother major (and minor) industrial nations, such as Finland, Japan, Slovenia,France, Germany, Greece, Spain, and Austria, have been more effective thanthe United States in fighting infant deaths. Indeed, the U.S. infant mortalityrate is higher than the summary rate (5) for all industrialized countries(UNICEF 2007a).

Child inoculation rates are another informative measure of a society’sbehavior toward its children. As we entered the new millennium, 20% oftwo-year-olds failed to have the full series of childhood vaccinations. Nearlya decade later, the United States has yet to reach its goal of a 90% immuniza-tion rate (Children’s Defense Fund 2006). And while recent UNICEF dataindicate that 92% of one-year-olds in the United States are fully immunizedagainst polio, that figure lags behind rates found in far less developed nations,such as Trinidad and Tobago (97%), Botswana (97%), Cyprus (98%), Cuba(99%), Kazakhstan (99%), and Sri Lanka (99%; UNICEF 2006).

Children Are Our Most Precious Commodity——25

Photo 3.2 Copyright Karen A. Cerulo. Reprinted by permission of Karen A. Cerulo.


The wealthiest nation in the world doesn’t guarantee a healthy start to all ofits newborns. Eight percent of U.S. babies are born at a low birth weight, anumber that has been increasing in recent years (Martin et al. 2006). This 8%rate is higher than that found in many other countries of the world: Republic ofKorea and Sweden (both 4%); Cuba, Denmark, and Norway (all 5%); Spainand Switzerland (both 6%); and Germany, France, and Kuwait (all at 7%; seethe Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics 2006; UNICEF2007b). And every day in the United States, more than 1,800 newborns join theranks of the uninsured in America (Children’s Defense Fund 2007).

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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Finland

Norway

Sweden

Belgium

France

Greece

Spain

United Kingdom

Cuba

UNITED STATES

Lithuania

Nat

ion

Infant Mortality Rate

SOURCE: UNICEF Child Mortality Rates. http://www.childinfo.org/areas/childmortality/infantdata.php

NOTE: Infant mortality rate refers to the number of deaths of children under one year of age per1,000 live births.

Figure 3.1 Infant Mortality Rate for the United States and Selected Countriesof the World


To be sure, it is not easy nor is it safe to be young in America (see Figure 3.2).Consider, for example that for each day of 2003, fifteen 10- to 24-year-oldswere murdered in the United States. (Most were killed by guns.) Indeed, in theUnited States, gunfire kills a child or teen every three hours (Children’s DefenseFund 2007). Homicide is the leading cause of death for Blacks in this age group,and it is the second leading cause of death for 10- to 24-year-old Hispanics.Note too that in 2004, more than 750,000 of those aged 10–24 received emer-gency room treatment for injuries from violence. And America’s love of auto-mobiles can be lethal for children. Injuries from car accidents are the leadingcause of death for U.S. children. And of those children under 14 who are killedin auto accidents, nearly half were unrestrained passengers (Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention 2007a).

These facts and figures on the physical well-being of U.S. children unveilglaring discrepancies between what we say and what we do with regard tochildren. However, the discrepancies extend well beyond the realm of healthand mortality. Although conventional wisdom celebrates the child, the real-ity is that millions of American children confront poverty and its many illsthroughout their childhood. Currently, slightly more than 18% of thoseunder 18 years old are living in poverty; for those 6 years of age or youngerthe rate climbs to 20%. (Contrast these figures with 13.3% of the overallpopulation and 10% of the 65+ population living below the poverty level;see, e.g., Children’s Defense Fund 2006, National Center for Children inPoverty 2007, U.S. Census Bureau 2005a). Between 2000 and 2005, thenumber of children living in poverty rose by 11% (Fass and Cauthen 2006).If we compare the United States to a select group of industrialized, marketeconomy countries (what are known as “rich” OECD nations), our recordon fighting childhood poverty is truly dismal. Among the OECD nations, the


•• Every 36 seconds a baby is born into poverty.•• Every 36 seconds a child is confirmed as abused or neglected.•• Every 47 seconds a baby is born without health insurance.•• Every minute a baby is born to a teen mother.•• Every 2 minutes a baby is born at low birth weight.•• Every 19 minutes a baby dies before his first birthday.•• Every 3 hours a child or teen is killed by a firearm.•• Every 4 hours a child or teen commits suicide.•• Every 6 hours a child is killed by abuse or neglect.•• Every 18 hours a mother dies in childbirth.

SOURCE: Children’s Defense Fund: Moments in America for Children, May 2007. http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_national_data_moments

Figure 3.2 “Select” Moments in the Lives of U.S. Children


United States ranks the highest in per capita income. Yet it has the highestchildhood poverty rate (21.9%). Among the “rich” OECD nations, theUnited States also has the distinction of having the lowest social expendi-tures for fighting poverty (Economic Policy Institute 2005).

It should also be noted that for many poverty scholars, official povertyrates fail to capture economic hardship in the United States. This is becausethe poverty level is calculated using what many consider an outdated metric.(That metric is based on 1950s data and assumes that the average familyspends one-third of its income on food.) Using the official equation, thepoverty level for a family of four is approximately $20,700. But for many,this figure is unrealistically low. It fails to give sufficient weight to the grow-ing and disproportional impact of non-food family expenses such as healthcare, child care, housing costs, transportation expenses, and so on. Criticsargue that a family of four needs about twice the official poverty level tomeet its basic needs (or approximately $40,000 a year). Families with thislevel of income, however, are classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as “lowincome” rather than as impoverished. If we were to revise our poverty sta-tistics to utilize these new income cutoffs, we would find almost 40% of U.S.children living in “impoverished” conditions (Fass and Cauthen 2006).

To fully understand the plight of our nation’s children, consider theseimages. In a “group portrait” of the U.S. poor, more than one-third of thefaces would belong to children (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 2006).More than 9 million children—almost one in eight—have no health insur-ance. One in six children are born to mothers who did not receive any pre-natal care in the first trimester (Children’s Defense Fund 2007).

Living conditions play a role in this group portrait of the poor. Financiallyspeaking, two-parent families represent the most favorable condition forchildren. But the percentage of children under 18 living in such householdshas fallen from 77% in 1980 to 67% in 2005. Today 23% of children underthe age of 18 live in mother-only families. Such arrangements can exact aheavy cost for children: 31% of the children in mother-only families live inpoverty. Contrast this with the fact that only 6% of children in married cou-ple families are poor (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and FamilyStatistics 2006; U.S. Census Bureau 2006a, POV10). The high poverty ratefor children in single-mother families is in part due to “deadbeat dads.” Forfamilies below the poverty level, child support constitutes 30% of the familyincome (Turetsky 2005). In divorced families, child support constitutesabout one-quarter of total family income. It is responsible for lifting abouthalf a million children out of poverty each year (Center for Law and SocialPolicy 2007). More than 17 million children are due more than $100 billionin child support. The Association for Children for the Enforcement of Support

28——Culture


reports that only 53% of owed child support is collected (Association forChildren for Enforcement of Support 2008).

Poverty undermines the education of our children as well. Before enteringkindergarten, children in the highest socioeconomic groups have cognitivescores that are 60% above the average scores for children in the lowestsocioeconomic group. As children move through the system, the effects ofpoverty persist. Low-income third graders with undereducated parents havevocabularies of about 4,000 words. In contrast, their peers from middle-income families with well-educated parents have vocabularies of 12,000words (Klein and Knitzer 2007). Note too that poor children are more likelyto be retained in a grade, and they have high school dropout rates that aresix times higher than their wealthy peers. By age 24, almost half of youngadults raised in affluent families have graduated from college, compared toonly 7% of their low-income counterparts. The conditions of poverty attackthe schools themselves. High-poverty schools are more likely to be over-crowded than schools attended by wealthier children. And classes in thesehigh-poverty schools are 77% more likely to be assigned to teachers who didnot major in the fields in which they are teaching (Children’s Defense Fund2005b; U.S. Department of Education 2006).

For many children, poverty goes hand in hand with homelessness; nation-ally, about 40% of the homeless population consists of children under 18years of age. Further, families with children are among the fastest-growingsegments of the homeless population (National Coalition for the Homeless2006). These conditions have prompted at least one writer to observe thatchild poverty is one of our country’s most stunning failures (Madrick 2002).

But even among children who have a roof over their heads, life is notalways easy. National surveys suggest rates of physical and sexual child abusethat are completely inconsistent with America’s pro-child rhetoric. The U.S.Department of Health and Human Services estimates that approximately900,000 children (or a rate of 12.1 per 1,000) were victims of abuse andneglect in 2005. Sixty-three percent of these children experienced neglect, 7%were physically abused, and 9% were sexually abused. During 2005, approx-imately 1,500 children died from abuse and neglect (Administration forChildren and Families 2005).

While it may be hard to fathom mistreating helpless babies and infants, notethat it is the youngest children who are the most vulnerable to abuse andneglect. Almost 29% of victims of abuse and neglect are between 0 and 3 yearsof age, and more than half of all victims are under 7 years of age (Children’sDefense Fund 2005a). The youngest children also experience the highest ratesof fatalities. In 2005, more than three-quarters of those children killed wereunder 4 years of age (Administration for Children and Families 2005).



As children make their way into the school system, danger persists.Student days are certainly not carefree days for children. Thirty percent ofsixth to tenth graders have reported being the targets or the perpetrators of bullying (Centers for Disease Control 2006a). At the high school level,nearly 8% were threatened or injured on school property, and nearly 14%were in a physical fight on school property. Almost 30% had their propertystolen or deliberately damaged while in school (Centers for Disease Control2006a). In the United States, school grounds simply don’t offer students asufficiently safe haven.

Alcohol and drugs play a role in the lives of our schoolchildren as well.Forty-three percent of students reported drinking alcohol on one or moredays in the preceding month. Twenty-five percent have engaged in heavydrinking (five or more drinks in a row). Twenty-six percent had first con-sumed alcohol before the age of 13. With regard to drugs, 9% of eighthgraders, 17% of tenth graders, and 23% of twelfth graders report usingillicit drugs in the previous 30 days. Sex is a factor to be reckoned with aswell. Nearly 47% of high school students have already had sexual inter-course, and 34% are currently sexually active (Centers for Disease Control2006a; Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics 2006).

Our schools also appear to fail our children with regard to academicachievement. Since the early days of the American space program, manyhave voiced concern regarding the performance levels of American school-children. These concerns are well grounded. While U.S. fourth graders earnhigher scores in reading literacy than students from 23 other countries, theyearn lower math scores than students from 11 countries. U.S. high schoolstudents are consistently outperformed by students in Asian and Europeancountries in math and science (U.S. Department of Education 2006, SpecialAnalysis). Eleven percent of 16- to 18-year-olds are functioning at a belowbasic literacy rate (Kutner et al. 2007). The U.S. mean prose literacy scorefor those with a high school degree was near the bottom of a 19-country list(18th out of 19—see the National Institute for Literacy 2007a). Across thenation, the average high school graduation rate is 74% (U.S. Department ofEducation 2006, Indicator 28).

We may idealize childhood (especially in our memories). But these every-day patterns suggest that the reality for today’s U.S. children is often any-thing but ideal. Indeed, despite our pro-child stance, many children findchildhood too difficult to endure. The suicide rate among American youthincreased by 240% from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. Among contem-porary youth, 17% of today’s high school students report that they haveseriously considered suicide in the last year, and 13% report having made asuicide plan. It is no wonder then that suicide is the third leading cause ofdeath for 15- to 24-year-olds (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

30——Culture


2007b). On an average day in the United States, five children or teens willtake their own lives (Children’s Defense Fund 2007).

What meaning can we draw from the discrepancies between conventionalwisdom’s view of children and the way children actually are treated? Are wesimply a nation of hypocrites? We gain some perspective on the issue whenwe consider a distinction sociologists draw between ideal culture and real cul-ture. Ideal culture comprises the values, beliefs, and norms each society claimsas central to its modus operandi. In other words, ideal culture has to do withaspirations, the ends or goals of our behaviors. In contrast, real culture refersto those values, beliefs, and norms we actually execute or practice. Thus, realculture has to do with behaviors or the means to a society’s ends.

Your own life experiences have surely taught you that humans have aremarkable capacity to be inconsistent: We can say one thing and doanother. In fact, Americans have a cultural prescription reflecting this capac-ity: “Do as I say, not as I do.” When sociologists examine the fit betweenideal and real culture, they are exploring the “Say one thing, do another”phenomenon as it occurs at the social level.

For a society to achieve perfect agreement between its ideal and real cul-tures, it must achieve both consensus on goals and agreement regarding theappropriate methods for achieving those goals. That is, ideal and real cul-tures are in balance only when a society is free of contradiction betweenwhat it says and what it does. If a society cannot synchronize its goals andbehaviors, then it experiences a condition sociologists refer to as culturalinconsistency. Cultural inconsistency depicts a situation in which actualbehaviors contradict cultural goals. Cultural inconsistency indicates animbalance between ideal and real cultures.

Why do cultural inconsistencies emerge in a society? Conflict theoristsoffer one possible answer. Conflict theorists analyze social organization andsocial interactions by attending to the differential resources controlled bydifferent sectors of a society. These theorists suggest that the inability to bal-ance ideal and real cultures has much to do with the broader issues of powerand social policy. Power is the ability of groups and/or individuals to getwhat they want even in the face of resistance. Social policies are officiallyadopted plans of action.

In American society, social policies often guide social behaviors, or whatwe are referring to as real culture. Yet social policies rarely emerge from aconsensus of the general population; they are rarely directed toward idealculture. Rather, such prescriptions inevitably are influenced by the actionsand relative power of various sectors of the population: special interest groups,political action committees, lobbyists, and so on.

By definition, special interest groups promote or advance the cause of cer-tain segments of the population, such as the New Christian Right, senior



citizens, tobacco manufacturers, or trial lawyers. Thus, these groups areunduly responsive to the interests of the few—and necessarily ignore thebroader interests of the larger population. Special interest groups vie to pre-scribe social policy. Ultimately, then, social policy generally reflects the par-ticularized goals of groups sufficiently powerful to influence it.

Lacking control of economic resources or access to the political ballotdenies children, as a collective, the typical tools of power. Furthermore, ageworks against the self-serving collective actions of children. Children aredependents; they must rely on adults to act as their advocates. As a result,the interests and rights of children always will be weighed against those ofparents, families, and society at large. The child’s voice always will be ren-dered via an intermediary’s perspective.

The drawbacks of the child’s indirect political presence are aptly illus-trated when we review efforts to combat child abuse in the United States.History reveals a parade of policies consistent with child advocates’ viewsand beliefs regarding the best interests of children. For example, child advo-cates of the early 1800s believed that abused and neglected children were atrisk of delinquency; such advocates saw abused children as threats to society.As a result, social and reform policies of the period demanded the institu-tionalization of abused children. Protecting society was deemed “action inthe best interest of the child.” In the early 1900s, the newly emerging pro-fessions of social work and clinical psychology argued that promoting andprotecting intact families would best serve the interests of children. Such pol-icy recommendations remanded abused children to the very sites of theirmistreatment (Pfohl 1977).

In the current era, many child advocates continue to cling to the familyprotection theme. The Family Research Council, for example, is an advisorygroup that has worked for the past 25 years to promote traditional familyvalues. This group rejects any efforts to view children and their rights as anissue separate from the context of the family; they are dedicated to the pri-macy of paternal authority (Gusdek 1998). The Family Research Council’sposition, as well as those of other groups before them, makes the politicalplight of children clear. Without the ability to organize and lobby solely ontheir own behalf, children will always be one critical step removed from thesocial policy process—and the gap between the ideal and real cultures thatframe childhood in America will continue to exist.

Given the cultural inconsistency that exists in American society’s stancetoward children, isn’t it hypocritical to continue to espouse the ideals wehold? Should an honorable society promote ends it cannot meet?

Sociologically speaking, there are several important reasons to maintainthe concept of an ideal culture even when society fails to practice what it

32——Culture


preaches. First, a gap between goals and behaviors—that is, a gap betweenideal and real cultures—does not diminish the value of a society’s ideals. Wecan honestly place a high value on children even though our behaviors mayfall short of the ideal. Ideals, goals, and values are aspirations, and as such,they are frequently not achieved.

Second, changing ideal culture to fit a society’s actual practices mightindeed bring an end to cultural inconsistency. However, such a changewould not alter an important fact: Children literally are the future of anygroup or society. For a society to survive, individuals must be persuaded to reproduce themselves. In preindustrial days, economic necessity was anattractive incentive for reproduction. Children furnished valuable laborpower to colonial families. Children were valuable sources of family incomein the early days of industrialization as well. In the industrialization era,children regularly took their places alongside older workers in factories andsweatshops (LeVine and White 1992; Zelizer 1985).

Today, the economic incentives attached to childbearing have changeddramatically. Children are no longer regarded as valuable labor power orincome sources for families. Furthermore, the cost of having and raisingchildren in our society has risen dramatically over the years. In a middle-income two-parent, two-child household, it is estimated that 42%–50% oftotal household expenditures are attributable to the children. The U.S.Department of Agriculture estimates that the expense of raising one childborn in 2006 is close to $190,000 for the lowest income families, just over$260,000 for middle-income families, and just over $381,000 for the high-est income families! These lifetime expense estimates do not include the costof a college education. Parents who agree to assist with college costs must beprepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars more to cover college tuitionand room and board (Lino 2007).

Changes in lifestyles and priorities, education, and career commitmentsrender the decision to have children more problematic today than at earlierpoints in America’s history. Individuals no longer automatically equatechildren with personal fulfillment and happiness. Surveys reveal that manymarried adults report that their highest levels of marital satisfaction occurredbefore they had children or after their children left home. Indeed someresearchers assert that for a growing number of adults, having children is nolonger a defining life event (National Marriage Project 2006). The economicand personal costs of child rearing may account for the steady decrease inaverage family size during the past century. The latest census figures put theaverage family size at 3.2 for 2006 (U.S. Census Bureau 2006b). Furthermore,surveys indicate that Americans no longer fantasize about “having a housefull of children.” USA Today has reported that 52% of Americans say the



ideal family size is two or fewer children (USA Today 2003). Trend analysisfor the last several years reveals that more and more Americans are citing“two” as the ideal number of children (General Social Survey 2000).

Delayed childbearing also accounts for part of the decline in average familysize. Women in the United States are waiting longer to marry (U.S. CensusBureau 2004a) and to have children, and such delays ultimately translate intofewer total births (Martin et al. 2006). In addition, increases in educationlevels, career aspirations, satisfaction with present life situations, and morereliable birth control all appear to be making it easier for some couples toremain childless (Bennett, Bloom, and Craig 1992; Dalphonse 1997; Wu andMacNeill 2002). The latest census data indicates that 44.6% of women ofchildbearing age are childless (Dye 2005). In 2004, among those women whowere nearing the end of their childbearing years (ages 40–44), 20% remainedchildless, a twofold increase over the percent childless in 1976 (NationalMarriage Project 2006). A growing trend toward singlehood among the youngand middle-aged further complicates overall U.S. fertility patterns. Since 1970,there has been a steady increase in the percentage of males and females whohave never married: In 2005, 31% of males and 25.5% of females 15 yearsand older fell into the “never-married” category. When we consider all of thesechanges and trends, it isn’t too surprising to see that at present, only 21.5% ofU.S. households embody the traditional nuclear family, that is, married cou-ples with children under age 18 (U.S. Census Bureau 2007b).

Any society interested in its own survival must keep a watchful eye onsuch developments. In 2002, the U.S. birth rate reached its lowest level sincebirth records were first kept in the early 1900s: 13.9 births per 1,000 persons,a decline of 17% since 1990 (Zitner 2003)! With this drop, the United Statesteetered on joining the growing ranks of countries with below replacement-level fertility: Austria, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Portugal, South Korea, andTaiwan. Replacement-level fertility is the level needed for a population to con-tinually renew itself without increasing. Currently, replacement-level fertilityis about 2.1 children per woman. In 2005, the U.S. total fertility rate was 2.0(Haub 2007).

Many population experts regard lower birth rates as foreshadowing dan-gerous population decline. In general, low fertility produces shrinking laborforces. Declining birth rates also mean that the burden of supporting thesocial programs for a nation’s aging and retiring population will fall onfewer and fewer shoulders. And the longer low fertility rates exist, the harderit becomes to reverse population declines (McDonald 2001; Zitner 2003).Some suspect that the sluggish U.S. economy will further reduce our birthrate and bring us closer to the “zero population growth” situation of otherindustrialized countries of the world; others see our fertility rates settlinginto a stabilizing trend (Haub 2003, 2007).

34——Culture


Somewhat ironically, then, nations with increasingly geriatric populationscan ill afford record low birth rates—the older a population, the greater itsstake in achieving higher birth rates. Viewed in this light, maintaining anideal culture that values children makes good sense, even when we some-times fail to practice what we preach. Placing a high premium on children isone important way to ensure that individuals continue to make a financialinvestment in children and it is a policy that is being adopted by many indus-trialized countries (Haub 2007). By doing so, these countries are promotingthe critical raw material for societal survival. While once a rather academicsubject matter, discussion of world fertility issues is now finding its way intothe mainstream press. The Population Reference Bureau now has a Web sitethat allows users to monitor fertility conditions of low-fertility countries ofthe world. The U.S. fertility rate, while holding somewhat steady in the lastfew years, deserves our attention (Haub 2007).

American conventional wisdom on children seems at odds with ourbehaviors and actions. But this cultural inconsistency is not likely to disap-pear soon. Indeed, even if the costs of having and raising children continueto increase and the structures of our families continue to change, pro-childrhetoric may grow even stronger in the United States in the days ahead.

Learning More About It

For a very readable review of sociological perspectives on childhood, see WilliamCosaro’s book The Sociology of Childhood (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005).

The Child Trends Data Bank offers a collection of pertinent indicators for mon-itoring trends in child and family welfare: http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/about.cfm.

The Children’s Welfare League of America offers online national and state factsheets on the status of America’s children at http://www.cwla.org/advocacy. Scrolldown the page and follow the links for the “National” or the “State” sheets.

D. Russell Crane and Tim B. Heaton provide a collection of articles addressingfamily and poverty. See the Handbook of Families and Poverty (Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage, 2007).

The National Center for Children in Poverty offers a link to demographic pro-files of children in each of the 50 states: http://www.nccp.org/profiles/.

For an interesting perspective on historical responses to child abuse in the UnitedStates, see Stephen J. Pfohl’s “The Discovery of Child Abuse” (Social Problems24:3:310–323, 1977). Murray Straus and Denise Donnelly offer a thoroughreview of corporal punishment and its effects on children in Beating the DevilOut of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families and Its Effects on



Children (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001). And Sylvia I.Mignon, Calvin J. Larson, and William M. Holmes provide a comprehensivereview of family violence—one that offers an integrated theoretical explanation(sociology, psychology, and biology). See Family Abuse: Consequences,Theories, and Responses (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2002).

Viviana Zelizer offers a fascinating historical review on the social value ofchildren in Pricing the Priceless Child (New York: Basic Books, 1985).

A review of the issue of low fertility and its global spread can be found in S. Philip Morgan and Miles Taylor’s article, “Low Fertility at the Turn of theTwenty-First Century” (Annual Review of Sociology, 2006, 32:375–399).

To learn more about the promise of education, especially for girls, consultUNICEF’s “The State of the World’s Children: 2004”: http://www.unicef.org/sowc04/.

For a discussion on the discrepancy between goals and the paths we choose toachieve them, see Robert Merton’s classic 1938 work, “Social Structure andAnomie” (American Sociological Review 3:672–682).

The following organizations and sites can help you learn more about children insociety:

The Administration for Children and Familieshttp://www.acf.dhhs.gov

Children’s Defense Fundhttp://www.childrensdefense.org

Exercises

1. Take a look at the age statistics in Figure 3.3. Pay particular attention to therelative size of the various age groups and the corresponding implications forpopulation trends over the next 25 years. What does the graph suggest is alikely development with regard to our pro-child culture?

2. Select three family TV programs whose cast of characters includes children.Monitor the content of the programs for a two- to three-week period, noting program incidents and themes. On the basis of your observations,do the programs emphasize ideal or real culture in their portrayal ofchildren in our society? What factors can you suggest that might accountfor your findings?

36——Culture


3. Visit and view the state fact sheets about children posted on the ChildWelfare League of America Web page http://www.cwla.org/advocacy/statefactsheets/statefactsheets06.htm:

• What are the states (if any) where the poverty rate for children under 18is lower than the overall poverty rate for the entire state? What were yourmost surprising findings? Least surprising? Which states appear to be


SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2007c. “International Data Base.” http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/.

5–90–4

10–1415–1920–2425–2930–3435–3940–4445–4950–5455–5960–6465–6970–7475–7980–8485+

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Male

14121086420

Female

Population (in millions)

United States: 1997

5–90–4

10–1415–1920–2425–2930–3435–3940–4445–4950–5455–5960–6465–6970–7475–7980–8485+

14 1412 1210 108 86 64 42 20 0

Male Female

Population (in millions)

United States: 2025

Figure 3.3 Age and Gender Distribution of the U.S. Population, 1997 and 2025


making the most progress against childhood poverty? What’s your evi-dence? Speculate about the factors that seem to account for progress.

4. Sample some TV commercials from early morning children’s programming.Use the information to assemble a “social profile” of U.S. children. How doesthis profile (i.e., race, economic status, living arrangements, etc.) comparewith the picture provided by the National Center for Children in Poverty(http://www.nccp.org/profiles/)?

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Social Structure


Essay 3 - SAGE Publications Inc...Essay 3 Conventional Wisdom Tells Us. . . Children Are Our Most...

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Transcript of Essay 3 - SAGE Publications Inc...Essay 3 Conventional Wisdom Tells Us. . . Children Are Our Most...