A Time for Bold Visions for Children

• Author: Nancy E. Dowd
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12344
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018

A TIME FOR BOLD VISIONS FOR CHILDREN

Nancy E. Dowd

Four million children will be born in the United States during the first year of the Trump adminis-

tration.

1

Globally, an estimated 130 million children are born each year.

2

By the end of the presi-

dent’s term, assuming that he serves a full term, sixteen million will be born in the United States and

520 million globally. One lens to explore the impact of this administration is to consider what might

happen to those children in that time frame. Here, my lens is domestic, to consider the impact of this

administration on U.S. children.

Data can tell us what to expect and the likely challenges of children in that time frame. Many of

those challenges will be the same as those experienced by children in other administrations. In other

words, one can argue that what is happening to children under this administration is not much differ-

ent from what has happened under prior administrations.

3

We spend little, we focus little, and we

accomplish little with respect to early childhood, and that has been going on for quite some time.

4

Policies that undermine the well-being of parents have enormous impact on children. It is here

that the policies and rollbacks of the Trump administration have been the most negative. Those

include undermining healthcare for all, limiting access to birth control, proposed federal restrictions

on abortion, and static or declining funding for essential benefits for families.

5

One particularly egre-

gious example is the failure to reauthorize funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a

highly successful initiative to provide healthcare to all children.

6

Our inattention to children does not mean that all children are equally affected. To the contrary,

there are hierarchies among children, defined particularly by poverty, but because of the association

of poverty with particular historically disfavored, subordinated groups, these hierarchies are defined

also by race, ethnicity, and gender.

7

Inattention to those most in need undermines community support

and disproportionately impacts children of color, relegating them to the same inequities with little

promise of new policies or approaches.

8

Failing to support children, generally, thus means a rein-

forcement of hierarchies among children and the perpetuation of hierarchies among adults.

This support must begin at birth. And because every child’s situation at birth is linked to the con-

text of pregnancy, it must include that context: the circumstances of the mother who brings the child

into the world and how her ecology affects the life that she brings into being.

9

Rather than articulate the serious problems and challenges of the Trump era, I want to urge that

we take advantage of the energy generated in opposition to take up the challenge of articulation of a

new vision. The bold assertion of values epitomized by Trump challenges us to affirmatively state

the values of a different democratic society. Most importantly for children, it requires us to move

past not only this administration but also the neglect of children that has been the hallmark of multi-

ple administrations at least since the passage of the Great Society programs of the Johnson

administration.

10

Because of the inadequacies of existing policies for children and the failure to look at things from

the perspective of children, I have argued that we need a New Deal for Children: a comprehensive,

structural, and cultural set of policies to ensure that every child gets equal developmental support.

Central to such a policy is the right of every child to developmental support, to ensure their equality

by a fair start to achieve their developmental capacity.

11

This is a call for broad system change: sys-

temic reform of existing systems (including education and juvenile justice), constructing new

Correspondence: dowd@law.ufl.edu

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 56 No. 2, April 2018 346–348

V

C2018 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts