The U.S. ranks among the worst in developed nations in which to raise children. Its poor performance is both alarming and consistent. But as the new U.S. administration goes to work, there are flickering signs that America’s children may start to get the care and respect they deserve. The Biden-Harris Administration is proposing a combination of emergency relief and permanent policies that are long overdue, albeit a drop in the bucket. But they’re significant and evidence-based, and they may begin to help us catch up with the more supportive ways other countries treat their children.
Policies and the beliefs and values they telegraph comprise a systemic approach to children, just as they do for any demographic, e.g. gender, ethnicity, ability, etc. And historically, children are late to the justice table. For most of human history, children were not seen as fully human until they could work, and even then, it was legal to abuse, enslave, and even kill them. They were considered objects—property to do with as one pleased. Some children were targeted more than others, including girls, the poor, immigrants, indigenous, and black children. In the U.S., child labor wasn’t outlawed until 1938; child abuse became illegal in 1974. Surgeries on babies were routinely performed without analgesics as late as the 1980s, as babies were deemed insufficiently evolved to feel pain—a belief refuted with data only in 1986.
The U.S. is progressing, but we lag far behind the rest of developed countries in elevating our children to the status and protection they deserve.
The most glaring example is our singular refusal among all UN member nations to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The UNCRC is a legally binding international agreement that acknowledges the basic human civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of children. The UNCRC maintains that children are “entitled to special care and assistance” because of their developmental status and decrees that governments should hold “the best interests of the child” central to all of their decision-making. The Convention includes 54 articles detailing the following children’s rights: to survive, develop, be educated, and cared for; to be protected from violence, war, abuse or neglect; and to have a voice in matters that affect them. Why has the U.S. refused to ratify the document? Largely because Republican senators have consistently blocked it, claiming that it will undermine the sovereignty of the American family. I think we can safely conclude that this is not an actual problem, as 196 countries have successfully governed by the UNCRC for decades.
How do U.S. children fare compared to children in other countries?
Spending on families. According to The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. ranks 34th out of 38 OECD countries in the percentage of GDP spent on family benefits. The OECD average is 2.4%, and while some Western and Northern European countries spend 3.5%, the U.S. spends less than 1.5%.
Source: OECD
Caregivers’ paid leave from work to take care of newborns or newly adopted children is critical for children’s good start in life, and it’s an important way governments support child development. Newborns literally need consistent access to their caregivers’ bodies to establish healthy regulatory systems for the rest of their lives. The U.S. is the only country among 41 OECD nations that does not provide paid leave (although five states and D.C. have enacted their own paid leave policies). By contrast, many other countries offer a full year, Estonia offers one and a half, and the smallest length of time offered by any OECD nation other than the U.S. is two months.
Child poverty. The U.S. has the 10th highest child poverty rate of 42 OECD countries; nearly one third of our country’s citizens in poverty are children. Research shows that poverty in childhood undermines cognitive, social, and emotional development as well as educational and occupational achievement. Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great War on Poverty saw child poverty rates decline, but beginning with the Reagan administration, that trend reversed—for children much more than for other age groups—as the graph below shows. This disproportionate data should raise questions about why the U.S. has chosen to hold poverty rates down for adults but not for children.
Source: Congressional Research Service
Overall well-being. UNICEF ranks the U.S. 36th out of 38 rich countries on the overall well-being of children. This includes their mental health, physical health, and academic and social skills—where America ranks 32nd, 38th, and 32nd respectively out of 38 countries.
Source: UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 16
(If you’re interested in how children are faring in your state, Kids Count ranks individual U.S. states on various measures of well-being. In overall well-being, Massachusetts ranks first, New Mexico last, and California 34th.)
Child mortality rates. Globally, children under five have the highest mortality rates of anyone under the age of 75:
Source: Our World in Data
And the U.S., one of the most medically advanced countries in the world, ranks 34 out of 44 OECD countries on infant mortality. Black babies in the U.S. are more than twice as likely to die than white babies.
Corporal punishment. A worldwide movement is gaining traction to prohibit the corporal punishment of children in any setting. (Corporal punishment is the intentional use of physical force to cause pain or discomfort, or non-physical force that is cruel or degrading.) As of this writing, 61 countries have legally prohibited it in all settings, e.g., family, daycare, school, prisons, etc. In the U.S., though outright child abuse is unlawful, corporal punishment just shy of that mark is legal in all families and in schools in 19 states. (See here for the difference between corporal punishment and child abuse.) Hitting an adult is considered assault, but the legal use of corporal punishment with children is just one example of the ways that they are denied the relationship rights and protections afforded to grownups. Five decades of research on the spanking of children shows that it leads to poor outcomes, but as of 2016, two thirds of U.S. parents agree with the statement “Sometimes a child just needs a good, hard spanking.”
Gun violence. Children in the U.S. are 15 times more likely to die from gun violence than children in 31 other rich countries combined. Gunshot wounds are the second leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S.; more children under five years of age died from gun violence in 2017 than law enforcement officers in the line of duty. Since 1963, more children and teens have died by gun than all the soldiers killed together in the Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars.
Source: Children’s Defense Fund, 2019
There are numerous other deeply disturbing statistics, but you can see the clear trend: The U.S. does not invest in its children like other developed nations. In his 2005 book Making Human Beings Human, influential developmental scientist Urie Bronfenbrenner writes:
America’s families, and their children, are in trouble, trouble so deep and pervasive as to threaten the future of our nation. The source of the trouble is nothing less than national neglect of children and…their parents (p. 211).
Laurence Steinberg a developmental scientist who studies teens, sounds a similar alarm in his 2015 book Age of Opportunity, Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence:
When a country’s adolescents trail much of the world on measures of school achievement, but are among the world’s leaders in violence, unwanted pregnancy, STDs,…binge drinking, marijuana use,…and unhappiness, it is time to admit that something is wrong with the way that country is raising its young people. That country is the United States (p. 1).
It’s time to rethink our rosy attitude about “American exceptionalism” and get real. America’s children are systematically undermined. We are only exceptional among nations in our ill treatment of them.
The political climate during the past four years was particularly hostile for children.
The last four years were brutal for children. Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign, youth bullying spiked to around 70%—directly attributable to Donald Trump’s racist, sexist, and violent rhetoric, according to the Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The parent-child attachment relationship was targeted and weaponized by the anti-immigrant child separation policy. At least 5,400 children were systematically separated from their parents at the southern border, and at least 545 remain “lost” in the system, unable to be reunited with their families. This kind of separation is clearly known to cause toxic stress in children and alter the structure of their developing brains; it’s recognized by human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights, and many more as a form of torture.
The Covid-19 pandemic layered on additional stress for the vulnerable: 700,000 children became uninsured, food insecurity spiked, and academic achievement disparities widened.
In her book Childism (a term for systematic prejudice against children), therapist Elisabeth Young-Bruehl writes that one of the clearest signs of a systematic bias against children is the “widespread acquiescence in policies that require future generations to shoulder responsibility for present prosperity.” She writes:
The young have been saddled with a world filled with violence, riddled with economic inequality, and endangered by a disastrous lack of environmental oversight; they must assume a gigantic burden of peacekeeping, legislating fairness, and halting environmental degradation (p. 14).
The last election has shown us that young people are increasingly politically active, expressing concerns over racial injustice, gun violence, climate change, and more. Yet in the 2020 election in California, a proposition that would have extended the vote to 17-year-olds was rejected.
Insulting language and micro-aggressions
Derogatory language about children is normalized in contemporary society. As Donald Trump increasingly went off the rails, the media often referred to him as a child or—especially damning—a toddler. Surely, if any other demographic were targeted with such an insult, it would be seen as biased and prejudicial.
Even loving caregivers use labels like a “difficult baby” (to whom?), or “the terrible twos” (as if humans shouldn’t strive for autonomy). Teenagers (or iGens) are routinely maligned, as are the prior generation, the millennials. They are talked over, excluded, ignored, and insulted, despite data showing that they are generally inclusive, creative, diverse, accepting, and politically active.
Derogatory language reveals underlying attitudes about children and is especially harmful because of the way human development works. Young children are wired to identify with adults and absorb the discourse around them as normal, as the benchmark of the society they’re learning to enter. Only in adolescence, when they start to individuate, do they have a chance to separate the wheat from the chaff. We place an additional burden on their development when they have to work to shed harmful stereotypes of any kind.
Can we turn a corner?
The Biden-Harris Administration is proposing an overarching “care economy” that recognizes the critical importance of supporting families in caring for their children. A few of their proposals are:
A $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that could reduce child poverty by 45%, according to an analysis by the Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
A commitment to emergency paid sick leave and family and medical leave, which research shows are critical to flattening the curve of Covid-19. The administration has also committed to a permanent 12-week paid family and medical leave policy, allowing families to care for newborns and other family members, and a national paid-sick-days law that makes it easier for people to care for themselves and others when illness strikes.
Shoring up childcare by reducing costs to families through tax credits and subsidies, and building more childcare centers, including in workplaces. Unpaid caregivers will also receive a tax credit. Importantly, the current administration plans to build up the childcare workforce with better pay, benefits, training, worker protections and career opportunities.
Free, high-quality universal early childhood education for pre-kindergarten three- and four-year-olds. Economists have long recognized that this investment is the best way to improve the economy over the long term.
Making schools hubs for parent and child support by providing more mental health professionals and community resources to families right in school buildings. This is an idea long supported by developmental scientists and educators.
Creating a task force to reunite separated children with their parents, which First Lady Jill Biden will oversee.
There is so much more to do, but these initiatives are hopeful signs that America, at long last, may finally begin to leave harmful approaches to children in the dust bin of history.
In the meantime, adults who raise, guide, and educate children have a powerful role, too. Historian Lloyd deMause documents the history of childhood in his book The Emotional Life of Nations, and he writes that when leaders don’t lead, caregivers can. “Changes in childrearing precede social change,” he reminds us (p. vi). Adult citizen voices are critical to persuading politicians to support families. Informed by developmental science and policy research, Americans can lift up our children, recognize their full humanity, and offer a more stable, successful, and hopeful future for all of us.
(Thumbnail image: Amy Humphries)