Saving our nation's most precious resources: our children.

• Author: Stephens, Gene

Too many of America's children have been neglected, abused, and ignored. Without change, the dark spectre of generational warfare predicted by some could become all too real. If that deadly conflict occurs, it will be because no one pays attention to the all-too-evident trends and there is failure to pursue diligently new directions that can lead to a safe, sane, productive 21st-century society.

The concept of youth at risk has been defined in many ways and under many names (e.g., children at risk, children in trouble, at-risk teens, even at-risk families). A decade ago, the Domestic Policy Association in Dayton, Ohio, teamed with the Kettering Foundation in Washington, D.C., to work with communities across the U.S. to identify and save the nation's "at-risk" youth. In its literature, the movement suggested that up to 15% of the 16- to 19-year-old population was "at risk for never reaching their potential, at risk of being lost in society." Others would add children of any age if they are at risk of failing to become self-supporting adults; if indicators are that they are headed for a life in institutions for delinquency, crime, mental illness, addiction); might become dependent on taxpayer or charity support programs; and may face life on the streets, homeless and unemployed. Expanding the category well beyond 15% of the population are those who add teens and preteens who take on child-rearing themselves and/or drop out of elementary or secondary school -- most of whom, according to statistical probability, will face a life of underemployment, diminished expectations and opportunities, and failure to become productive, contributing citizens.

The task of "saving" these youngsters has become even more formidable, made more difficult by the expanding gap between rich and poor: the larger number of single-parent households and homes where both parents work; the growing gun culture with increasingly higher-tech weapons reaching the street level: and the increasing negativity about children manifested by curfews, treating younger and younger youths as adult criminals, and declaring kids "undesirable" in gated communities. Possibly most alarming is that only one of three American households today includes a child under 18. Increasingly numbers of lower- and middle-income children are growing up with little or no adult supervision, often without adequate resources for nurturing (and sometimes insufficient necessities for survival), and with a clear message from society that they are not wanted.

Without hope for the future and a stake in society, they often turn to peers for attention and guidance; to easily obtainable guns for protection, security, and status; and to sex and drugs for comfort, relief of boredom, and sometimes for subsistence. The gang often becomes their "family" -- the only place they get attention and approval -- and anti-social values fill the void left by family and society.

Their lack of faith in a future leaves them present-oriented and oblivious to society's laws. Living for today makes sense to them, especially when every day they are bombarded by media messages of enormous material wealth on the one hand and ever-prevalent violence and death on the other. Is it any wonder many of these youth seemingly without emotion steal and even attack others to obtain what they need and/or desire or just for momentary thrills or release of anger?

Criminologist James Fox of Northeastern University has extrapolated from social/demographic trends that a juvenile crime wave such as the U.S. never has seen will occur over the next decade. Citing statistics indicating 30% of children grow up in single-parent homes, most without fathers, with 20% raised in poverty, Fox predicts the 4,000 murders by teenagers in 1995 will skyrocket as the 39,000,000 kids under age 10 grow and increase by 20% the portion of the population in the teen years in the first decade of the 21st century.

Of course, having youth at risk is not a problem unique to the U.S. Wars, social upheaval, rapidly changing economic systems, political instability, and cultural animosity have placed millions of youngsters at risk across the planet. Thousands die of starvation, while others wander aimlessly in search of home and family. Many atrophy in sweatshops; others are sold into prostitution to support their families. Even more horrifying are those who are sacrificed for their body parts to satisfy a graying world population and those who are killed simply because they were born the wrong sex to satisfy their parent(s).

Nevertheless, catastrophe is not inevitable. There are some signs of hope -- a slightly decreased birth rate among American teenagers in the mid 1990s; a bipartisan concern raised in Washington for "saving the children"; many community-based experiments to try to meet the needs of youth; and a movement to consider insufficient prenatal care, poor parenting skills, child abuse, and child neglect as public health as well as social problems.

Beyond this, whereas data is sketchy, a striking change in the rearing of children in many families is taking place. Countering the trend to ignore or even abuse children is a...