A Bad Report Card for Good Kids

UNICEF released a report in Germany this week that shows the United States ranking near the bottom in a U.N. survey of child welfare in 21 wealthy countries. We ended up 20th, with only Britain below us. Countries that are less than 20 years removed from being part of the less-developed Eastern Bloc – Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary – ranked ahead of the U.S. The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Spain took the top five spots.

The survey focused on six categories: material well being; health and safety; education; peer and family relationships; behaviors and risks; and young people’s own subjective sense of well being. The U.S. and Britain were in the bottom two-thirds in five of the six categories.

The following reasons were cited for the poor showing by the U.S. and Britain, despite their high levels of material well being:

§ Greater economic inequality
§ Higher levels of child poverty
§ Higher infant mortality
§ Poorer childhood health and health coverage, including preventative care
§ Fewer daycare facilities
§ Levels of investment in children
§ Poor levels of public services and support for families
§ Levels of risky behavior among children, such as drinking and sexual activity
§ Percentage of children living in single-parent homes or with stepparents
§ (90% of the children in Italy and Greece live with both parents; only 60% in the U.S. do)
§ School dropout rate
§ Schoolyard bullying
§ Percentage of children who eat their main meal of the day with their families at least several times a week
§ Proportion of children who said they had “kind” or “helpful” relationships with other children

This isn’t a good national report card, especially for a country that spends so much political energy pontificating about “family values”. A study like this suggests that there are family values that are far more important than the ones that get all the heated rhetoric in this country – gay marriage; sex and violence on TV and in movies; pornography; stem cell research; school vouchers; school prayer; etc.

A lot of people in this country are rabid defenders of embryos, fetuses, and unborn children, but then too many of those same people aren’t advocating for the protection and well being of children after they’re born. Many pro-lifers are, perhaps, more pro-birth than they are pro-life. They want government to ensure that a child gets into childhood; but they don’t want government doing much to ensure that a child gets through childhood. Government is always good when it’s doing what we want it to do.

A number of other studies make it clear that children in the U.S. are falling woefully behind other well-developed countries in multiple key educational measures, which will hurt our ability to compete successfully in a global economy, which will have a direct bearing on the future well being of the American family and its children. One day the U.S. and Britain may discover that even their relative material well being has slipped into the bottom of these rankings.

Americans don’t take criticism about their country very well. I’m sure there will be more than a little pushback on this study. Disparaging comments about UNICEF and the UN are likely to be spit here and there on talk radio and by Faux News commentators.

We’re grieving the loss of American leadership in the world on several fronts and, as everyone knows, the first stage in the grieving process is denial. Hopefully, many of us will at least move on to second-stage anger and eventually to fifth-stage acceptance, which is where we will begin the work of reversing these trends.

We owe not just the best we have to offer to our children, but the best the world has to offer. Just as others have learned from us in the past, we should try to learn from others in the future.