Improvement needed in children's well-being.

The Center for Families and the Cooperative Extension Service at Purdue University have compiled 10 data "snapshots" that give a dark picture of how children are being treated in America. "People assume that our nation is the world's leader in everything, and in many areas that's true," explains Susan Kontos, director of the center and professor of child development. "It's true for the military; it's true for higher education; but it's not true at all for child-related issues. In some areas, we are among the worst of the industrialized nations. It's not that our country doesn't have the resources. We obviously have more resources than anybody. We just haven't made it a priority."

According to Janet Gordon, acting assistant dean, one of the first things people notice about what researchers term "child well-being indicators" is how interrelated many of them are. "When you have a single-parent family, that often means that the family is below the poverty level. This might cause stress about finances, which might bring on child abuse, or it might cause poor nutrition choices, which might cause low-birthweight babies or even infant mortality."

The child well-being indicators are:

Single-parent families. "Single-parenthood doesn't necessarily jeopardize children, but it creates special challenges and requires additional support for these families that often isn't there," Kontos explains. "Likewise, divorce doesn't cause poverty, but many single mothers live in poverty."

Teen unmarried births. The rate has been increasing steadily.

Infant mortality. "Our infant mortality rate [about nine deaths per 1,000 births! is the highest in the industrialized world," Gordon points out.

Low-birthweight babies. "This is one of the most stubborn problems for the nation," Kontos indicates. "It is the factor that is most likely to contribute to infant mortality. And even when the babies do survive, they often do so at a high expense for society." The average hospital stay of a low-birthweight baby is 30 days, which costs an estimated $60,000. Despite these efforts, they are 40 times more likely to die in their first month than normal-weight infants.

Child poverty rate. Two of every 11 youngsters live in poverty. "Children are now the poorest citizens in our country. It used to be senior citizens, but our nation did something about that and turned it around," says...