Just wondering if this commentary in the Aug. 13 Wall Street Journal may be the start of a groundswell that starts a movement to have kids be kids again. Does sheltering kids create a society of adults who are too timid or take too many risks?
Just when we thought playgrounds were accident-proof — no more merry-go-rounds, high slides, jungle gyms, seesaws or pretty much anything that’s fun — it turns out that safety itself can be dangerous. A recent heat wave in New York exposed a new playground risk: The ubiquitous rubber safety matting gets hot, not as hot as McDonald’s coffee, but hot enough to scald tender feet.
The outrage was immediate. “Playgrounds should be designed with canopies,” one park- safety advocate declared. “How many burn cases will it take,” Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate asked, “before the city wakes up and acts?”
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Emory University’s John Witte Jr. posits his ideas to strengthen laws that would hold adults accountable for the children they conceive. He does briefly touch on the physical and emotional costs of parents who don’t parent, but the actual monetary damage to the country takes center stage.
So are stricter laws governing adult behavior too much or too little?
Thirty-eight percent of all American children are now born out of wedlock, and it costs American taxpayers $112 billion per year. Those are the sobering numbers recently reported by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and by the Institute for American Values.
The Census Bureau numbers break down as follows: 28 percent of all Caucasian, 50 percent of all Hispanic, and 71 percent of all African-American children were born to single mothers in 2007. Compared with children born and raised within marital households, non-marital children on average impose substantially higher costs on society for anti-poverty, criminal justice and education programs and in lost tax revenues. According to the Institute for American Values, those costs exceeded $1 trillion this past decade.
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In a related piece, the Boston Globe looks at how society might consider men as a vulnerable class when combatting poverty as most social services and policies are aimed at women and children. If a man is able bodied, should they be compelled to support their families?
Missing men: America’s fight against poverty has a growing hole. Some say it’s time to pay attention to the people falling through it: men.
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Tune into Georgia Public Broadcasting this Sunday, Aug. 10 to watch Georgia Weekly. The Georgia Family Connection Partnership’s Gay Smith and Taifa Butler will join host Suzanne Hoffman to discuss the 2008 Kids Count statistics specific to Georgia.
Link to GPB website
After you watch the show, demonstrate that kids do count in Georgia by sending your comments about the segment to “Georgia Weekly” via e-mail at georgiaweekly@gpb.org.
