The children are our future

The children are our future

  • Submitted By: ksize
  • Date Submitted: 04/22/2013 10:47 AM
  • Category: Miscellaneous
  • Words: 479
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 228

English 1101
Summary Essay

The children are our future. Author of, “If the Child is Safe”, Marian Wright Edelman’s main point seems to be, that the American Dream is collapsing. That what we do today, and how we raise our children inevitably impacts our future. She points out how we need to be present in our children’s lives, and listen to their wants and needs.
Edelman begins by stating that family and community values are disintegrating among all races, and income groups, reflecting the spiritual as well as economic poverty of our nation. Our children are growing up with the instant gratification, and getting, not giving, mentality. The Media is full of polluted non-sense; glamourizing violence, sex, and greed. The writer adds that we do not have enough heroes in our daily life, causing us to only think of our own well-being and being unkind to one another.
Another important subject Edelman deals with is poverty. The essayist points out how young families of all races are in extraordinary trouble. Doubling birth rates and plummeting income have led to forty percent of all children in families with the head of household under thirty to be poor. More Americans feel their children are getting left behind. In 1990, 841,000 children were poor and suffering. The author insists that many undereducated, jobless, and poor, are forced with choices, such as, gangs, prison, or even death.

Next, the writer illustrates how many children are being born to younger mothers. A third of our mothers do not receive the care they need because our health care system, unlike others, does not provide universal basic coverage for mothers and children. Without that coverage, more than 1,080,000 American babies will be born at low birth-weight, multiplying their risk of death or disability. Miss Edelman also gives the statistic that one in every five births and more than one in three black births in the year 2000 will be to a mother who did not receive cost-effective early...

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