Homo sapiens are different from all other mammalian species in that our children are born premature: that is, human children require a long period of care after birth. One of the mechanisms for providing for this care is the human concept of the family.
Almost all human societies recognize the importance of children and the need to provide them with adequate care. This care includes food, health care, and emotional support. In recognizing the importance of children, Native American societies traditionally made decisions taking into account their impact on the seventh generation. In other words, what is going to be the impact of the decisions that we make today on the lives of our grandchildren’s great grandchildren?
In 1989 the UN adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention promises children around the world the fundamental right to life, liberty, education, and health care. Only the U.S. and Somalia have not ratified it. The convention forbids capital punishment for children, a move which the U.S. opposes.
In the length of time it takes a typical Daily Kos reader to read a diary on this website, about 12 children will have died from malnutrition worldwide. While death from malnutrition is ugly and a clear sign of poverty, the long term impact of undernourished children is really greater. While the U.S. at the present time does not have as many children dying from malnutrition as third world nations, it is really undernourishment during the formative years that is going to have an impact on the next seven generations. Children who suffer from periods of undernourishment during their first five years of life face serious consequences as they grow older. They do not grow to their full stature, they have significantly less resistance to disease, and they are less capable of learning in school.
Food insecurity for children, whether in the United States or in Sub-Sahara Africa, is not due to lack of food: it is a consequence of the lack of political will to make sure that food is distributed to those in need. Knowing the importance of food to learning and the importance of an education to our full-participation in a globalized post-industrial economy, it would seem to be vital to both our national security and the seventh generation to make sure that all school-children have adequate nutrition. Simply providing American children with breakfast and lunch will improve their education and make the United States more competitive in the world markets of the future.
In the United States today, half of our children need food stamps to provide them with basic nutrition. Some 17,000 American children died last year because of lack of health care. Bruce Lesley, writing in the Huffington Post:
America has always been about ensuring a brighter future for our children and grandchildren. But in our nation today, there are more than 14 million children living in poverty, 9 million kids without health insurance, and 1.2 million students dropping out of school each year.
Although we often view our nation as first among all countries, in measures of our children, we rarely break the top ten. Tragically, the United States ranks 20th out of 21 industrialized nations in measures of child poverty and well-being. America has the second worst infant mortality rate, and our graduation rate places us 13th in the world.
One measure of children’s health is the infant mortality rate (IMR): number of deaths of infants under one year of age in a given year per 1,000 live births. Many demographers (folks who study population characteristics) use the IMR as a rough measure of a country’s overall healthcare. Turning to the CIA’s World Factbook'sinternational comparison of IMRs, we see that Angola ties with the highest IMR in the world (18) while Singapore is the lowest (2.3). The US ranks 180th out of 224 nations with an IMR of 6.3. This compares with 5.0 in Canada and 18 in Mexico.
Looking at the mortality rate for children five years of age and younger, we see that the United States has a rate of 7.8 as compared with 5.9 in Canada and 4.1 in Singapore.
The United States generally fares worse than other developed nations because of its privatized healthcare system. In general, the children of poor people are less likely to get needed medical attention and are more likely to die during childhood. If we as a society really care about the future of our children, should we not provide them with adequate healthcare? And, as a part of healthcare, should we not provide them with adequate nutrition?