Think of the Children

"We're doing this for the children" has been one of the most often-used excuses for bad policy ideas. "The education system puts adult concerns ahead of children's concerns," has become a golden oldie among folks who want to put their own adult goals ahead of children's concerns.

You would imagine, for instance, that putting children's concerns first would mean schools operating with accountability and oversight so that children's right to a quality education are protected. If you believe in choice, then you might want to defend a child's ability to choose by guaranteeing that vouchers provide a full cost of tuition, that schools are forbidden to discriminate against students, and that enough quality control is in place to insure that students can choose safely. Those guards for student concerns are not only not in place, but are actively rejected. 

The real tell is that old favorite, "Children do not belong to the government." That's true as far as it goes, but the problem appears when someone, for instance the Washington Senate Republicans, say the second part of the statement out loud--

Your children do not belong to the government, they belong to you.

Well, no. Your children do not belong to anyone. They are not chattel or domesticated beasts of burden or toasters. They are live human beings, and as such, nobody's property. 

But some "conservative" folks don't see it. These are the folks who are already working from a world view that says some people are more valuable, more deserving of power and wealth than others, and way too often for them, children are another brand of others, useful only as potential future Correct Believers or meat widgets. 

We have to ban books because being exposed to any mention of sex, however slight, might damage their tender psyches. We can't teach about slavery because it might make the white kids feel bad (though couldn't the white kids choose to identify with the white folks who stood up against slavery). Children are the reason that certain adults should be allowed to narrowly confine what can and cannot be taught. That way they can grow up to be the kind of adults that current adults desire them to be.

Oh, and when it comes to life-saving vaccinations, it's more important to honor the vaccine-averse desires of adults than protect the health of the children.

They can never just say, "You should stop doing that because I don't like it." No, they're only speaking up in order to save the children.

Children are also useful as bargaining chips and leverage.

Every teacher who belongs to a union that had to throw its weight around has heard the argument. You can't strike, teachers, or even just work to contract, because that would hurt the students. Would it hurt the students to go to a school that has reduced resources, a disrespected staff, and a hiring policy of "If you can't find a decent teaching job anywhere else, settle for us here at Lowest Bidder School District"? It surely would. But maybe we can guilt the staff into shutting up about it.

Or take the new Heritage Foundation report, Saving America by Saving the Family, which includes the whole "desires of adults over the needs of children" shtick, and then goes on to spend 164 pages explaining how government should not meet the needs of children unless the desires of adult conservatives are met by the children's parents. 

Bruce Lesley (First Focus on Children) has an outstanding post breaking down this report, but we'll touch on some highlights here. For instance, the part where they note that the income loss that hits poor parents on the birth of a child-- but you can't give poor parents more money to cover that period because it would be "akin to a guaranteed basic income that would discourage work."

The Heritage report plainly gets that "early investments in children have high returns," yet they spend time explaining why certain people who make The Wrong Choices shouldn't benefit from those investments. Does that put adult concerns ahead of children's needs? Of course it does, but hey, the kids should have thought of that before they chose parents who didn't match the Heritage ideas of proper parenting. (Lesley suggests that Heritage is trying to do the very sort of social engineering that they often rail against, but I'd bet they simply see themselves as trying to return society to its proper factory settings.)

This is not a new argument. We are the lousiest nation in the world for parental leave, and the reason why isn't particularly complicated-- the needs of employers rank higher than the needs of babies. 

But we're about to see children used as a prop for yet another campaign. Meet Greater Than, a new campaign that declares "Real progress means putting children's needs ahead of adult desires." Doesn't that sound excellent? Can you guess what the real goal of this new campaign is? Here's a paragraph's worth of a hint from their website:

When marriage was redefined in 2015, parenthood was too. Once husbands and wives became optional, mothers and fathers became replaceable. But for a child, their mother and father are never optional, they are essential. Children need both a mother and a father to provide stability, guidance, and the unique love only a man and woman can give. No adult desire or ideology can change that.

 Yup. The folks who want to roll back Obergefell, the Supreme Court decision that recognized same-gender marriage, are proud to declare "We are the Defenders of Children." Their core allies include Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Colson Center, Family Research Council and Them Before Us. They have other allies on the national and state level. I noticed them because of an announcement that they were being joined by Pennsylvania Family Institute, the group that has worked hard to get anti-LGBTQ policies into schools. Said Randall Wenger, the PFI attorney who has personally worked to make the lives of LGBTQ children more difficult and to thwart the best intentions of their supportive parents:

I'm part of Greater Than because, since Obergefell, our laws have increasingly treated family as an abstract idea rather than a lived reality for children. We've experimented with new definitions while drifting away from the one model that has consistently supported human flourishing-- a child raised by his or her mother and father. Greater Than brings that essential truth back into focus.

The list just keeps getting longer. We have to defund, dismantle, and replace public education in order to save the children. We have to carefully control what children see and hear in order to save them. We have to create a multi-tiered education system to save the children. We have to force folks to maintain traditional families to save the children. We have to stamp out gay marriage to save the children.  

And yet. As amazing as that list is, I am even more amazed by the things that don't make it onto the Save The Children list. 

We don't have to require parental leave that insures parents are right there for the earliest months (or even years) of the child's life. We don't have to require vaccinations whether parents want them or not. We don't have to work to provide the economic supports and systems that help a young couple raise a child. We don't have to make child care affordable for parents. And we certainly don't have to direct Defense Department-sized funding and resources to make public schools fully capable delivery systems for excellent education and other supports. 

It's absolutely true-- we need to be very careful about putting what adults want ahead of what children need. But if you want to warn me about this issue, maybe show me some sign that you are part of the solution and not part of the problem.