Poor children live in a particularly dangerous world--an urban world of broken stair railings, of busy streets serving as playgrou...nds, of lead paint, rats and rat poisons, or a rural world where families do not enjoy the minimal levels of public health accepted as standard for nearly a century. Whether in city or country, this is a world where cavities go unfilled and ear infections threatening permanent deafness go untreated. It is world where even a small child learns to be ashamed of the way he or she lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most important difference between these early American families and our own is that early families constituted economic units ...in which all members, from young children on up, played important productive roles within the household. The prosperity of the whole family depended on how well husband, wife, and children could manage and cultivate the land. Children were essential to this family enterprise from age six or so until their twenties, when they left home.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is misleading to discuss recent changes in family life without emphasizing the fact that for generations some Americans have ha...d to raise children under particularly appalling pressures. Although much of what is worrying American parents is shared by them all, the most grievous problems are those that especially afflict a large minority--the poor, the nonwhite and, in various ways, the parents of handicapped children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The myth of the self-sufficient individual and of the self-sufficient, protected, and protective family ... tells us that those wh...o need help are ultimately inadequate. And it tells us that for a family to need help--or at least to admit it publicly--is to confess failure. Similarly, to give help, however generously, is to acknowledge the inadequacy of the recipients and indirectly to condemn them, to stigmatize them, and even to weaken what impulse they have toward self-sufficiency.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The myth of self-sufficiency blinds us to the workings of other forces in family life. For families are not now, nor were they eve...r, the self-sufficient building blocks of society, exclusively responsible, praiseworthy, and blamable for their own destiny. They are deeply influenced by broad social and economic forces over which they have little control.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The psychological pain--and the ethical shame--of American poverty are made greater by the fact that this country possesses the we...alth and the energy to raise all children to a minimally decent standard of living.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Confronted with the unhappy facts of exclusion, we sometimes reassure ourselves by telling stories: the poor boys who made it, the... blacks who became a "credit to their race," the women elected to high office, the handicapped who made "useful contributions" to our society.... Just as we believe in the self-sufficient family, we also believe that any child with enough grit and ability can escape poverty and make a rewarding life. But these stories and beliefs clearly reflect the exceptions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return that ...children brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up t...o their standards for their children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Recognizing that family self-sufficiency is a false myth, we also need to acknowledge that all today's families need help in raisi...ng children. The problem is not so much to reeducate parents but to make available the help they need and to give them enough power so that they can be effective advocates with and coordinators of the other forces that are bringing up their children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »