{"id":1642,"date":"2009-06-05T09:59:36","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T14:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2009-06-05T09:59:36","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T14:59:36","slug":"nice-work-but-what-about-the-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2009\/06\/05\/nice-work-but-what-about-the-children\/","title":{"rendered":"NICE WORK: But what about the children?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, the latest issue of Business Week<\/em> warns parents about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Age of Anxiety\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> facing young kids in their first recession. According to the psychologists over at BW:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The long-term psychological effects may be most profound for young children, since they are growing up without any real memory of better times. They can pick up on parents’ anxiety about money and may see the world as an uncertain place where they have to struggle to succeed. Later this may make them cautious about career choices and financial decisions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Does anyone else see this as absolutely hilarious\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and infuriating? Hmmm. Who knew economic hard times could be tough on children?<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, this piece was written without irony. BW<\/em> hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seemed to recognize that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new problem\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the trauma of economic bad times and uncertainty isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t new for a lot of kids, kids whose parents were outside the charmed circle of opportunity of the past few decades, for whom there wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever going to be any \u00e2\u20ac\u0153memory of better times\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in their family.<\/p>\n

As economist Nancy Folbre reminded us in her recent, and much more sensible, post \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hard Times for Kids,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> the United States has long had one of the highest child poverty rates of industrialized countries.<\/a> The main reason we do so poorly is that we make no effort to combat child poverty. Demographer Patrick Heuveline has demonstrated<\/a> that other rich countries like England and France would have the same child poverty rate that we do if they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t provide social supports to prevent it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Folbre makes an interesting point:<\/p>\n

\n

During this recession, many other problems, including huge bank bailouts, are competing for public attention and taxpayers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 money. Sometimes I wonder how closely the Child Well-Being Index would mirror an Adult Wrong-Doing Index.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If I were going to construct such a new index, financial malfeasance would rank high among the measurement domains. But in the composite, apathy among those who could do more to help poor children would receive at least an equal weight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that BW<\/em> is any more interested in the Child Well-Being Index than they are in an Adult Wrong-Doing Index. But when we wring our hands about the children, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remember to wring our hands about all<\/em> the children, including the children we have been neglecting in good times and bad.<\/p>\n

-Virginia Rutter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, the latest issue of Business Week warns parents about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Age of Anxiety\u00e2\u20ac\u009d facing young kids in their first recession. According to the psychologists over at BW: The long-term psychological effects may be most profound for young children, since they are growing up without any real memory of better times. They can pick up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nice-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}