Spare the Rod: Why Are More American Children Victims and Perpetrators of Violence Than Those of Any Other Developed Country?

Abstract

Children are perhaps the last of the great demographic groups that our society has finally begun to recognize as being systematically discriminated against, and in some ways even persecuted – though I should add that the battle for recognition of that fact is still an ongoing struggle that is far from won. We have already dealt with many other demographic groups of whom one could have said the same thing – for example, many minority groups, the poor, the disabled, women, and gays – the only difference being that with them, the recognition of their plight and the taking of concrete steps to amend it was begun decades ago, whereas the recognition of the degree to which we have been simultaneously and disproportionately punitive toward and neglectful of our own children is still only minimally recognized and mostly denied, whether at the level of public opinion in general, or of meaningful national policy changes in particular. That the face-saving defense mechanism of denial is the cause of our blindness toward the facts is the only explanation I can think of to explain the continuation of our indefensible treatment of our own children, given that the facts of their situation and the means of solving it have been laid out so clearly by the pioneering and dedicated advocates for children in our nation who have been tirelessly trying to bring this problem to our attention – among them scholars (James Garbarino), legislators (Congressman George Miller), and philanthropists (Irving Harris). This chapter can be read as one extended argument for the proposition that while we have already identified race, class and gender as categories that need to be addressed in order to bring to an end the discrimination that occurs against blacks and other minority groups, the poor, women and gays, we now need to add age – specifically, young age: childhood, adolescence and young adulthood – to the list as the next category we need to include in our roster of socially important areas where fundamental progress is urgently needed.