AN EVEN MORE MODEST PROPOSAL

Two hundred and seventy-six years ago, the great British satirist Jonathan Swift shocked everyone with a modest proposal: In the midst of a famine, Ireland could escape the burden of poor children by …. well, eating them. The author of Gulliver’s Travels pointed out that his society was unwilling to actually feed these hungry, dependent children, so what would be so shocking about eating them? He reminded everyone that the moral decision to let the children die had already been made by default by the Government and by the people who elected it . . . so what was so wrong with his proposal? If nothing else, it would be less wasteful.

Swift’s Modest Proposal would be altogether too shocking, excessive and ridiculous for our times. So allow me to propose something infinitely more humane and generous for our nation’s million plus abused and neglected children: . . . Let’s decide to treat them legally like animals.

We’ve long demonstrated that we are prepared to protect and nurture our pets much better than we’ll ever agree to watch over other people’s children. We have extensive laws that protect animals from abuse and neglect, and in many situations these legal protections are much better than those we apply to children in harm’s way. In these United States, a man who beats his dog is uniformly prosecuted, while a man’s right to beat his child is inherently protected. A century ago, laws protecting animals were already in place. Let us recall that the very first organization to stand up for children was an animal rights charity. Go figure.

Punishment to Fit the Crime?

In September, the national media pounced on the story of eleven Ohio children confined to cages by their adoptive parents. "Although most of the 'boxes' were not locked," authorities said in a statement, "the children were afraid to leave their 'boxes' at night even to use the bathroom because an alarm would sound and the parents would react in anger." The children’s crates were fashioned from wood and chicken wire and clearly did not include the designer mattresses that cushion America’s most pampered pets (I note that Asprey & Garrard offer a hand-crafted chocolate brown alligator-skin pet carrier with cashmere throw for $19,000). The children, all of whom have special needs, were removed from the home and are now in different foster care. Although the parents are under investigation, criminal charges have not yet been filed.

In a 2004 issue of the Stanford Law Review, Jill Elaine Hasday noted that:
“By the end of the nineteenth century, a majority of common law courts held that a parent could inflict reasonable or moderate correction on his child, and rarely convicted a parent for exceeding the bounds of reasonableness or moderation. [As of 2004], every state still recognizes a parent's authority to impose corporal punishment on his child. At least thirty states and the District of Columbia, for instance, have codified a parent's right to inflict "reasonable" corporal punishment. At least thirteen states have codified a parent's right to impose corporal punishment in slightly different terms. These statutes preserve a substantial portion of the common law regime.”

No political will on children

Let’s be honest here: There is no decisive will in Government or among the majority of voters to put kids first. We don’t agree with giving children national primacy as the future of our society. So why don’t we fess up and use the existing framework of laws that protect animals? Just define children before age 18 as animals and bingo, we’ll go a long way to providing the protections kids have in other countries. OK, so we’ve decided the United States should be the only nation (besides Somalia) of 194 not to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. OK, so we have 2,225 juveniles locked up for life without possibility of parole, while the entire rest of the world combined has a grand total of twelve…. But at least by giving children the rights we give animals in this country we might reduce the thousand plus who die each year of abuse or neglect, and the couple of million who suffer with no right to a lawyer, no right to sue for redress when the Government harms them, no right to be heard when their fate is being determined, no right to be safe. And who knows, we might even find a few of those many kids who are wards of a state but the state has somehow lost them….

Why we don’t put children first

We give an elevated national standing to so many worthy issues: National Security, the fight against terrorism, rebuilding the Gulf States, Social Security, tax cuts and so on, not to mention pork-barrel projects for politicians of every stripe. . . these issues for good or bad are given a kind of Golden Ticket among national priorities. Without debating any of them here, why has the position of children as our gating factor, the glass ceiling of future prosperity, stability and arguably as our only future, not been given at least a couple of those Golden Tickets? OK, so two might be too many. But what about the same little brass ticket we give to pets?

Impact of ignoring children’s needs

How did we develop this blind-spot? Is it that children don't vote? Is it that they don't lobby? Is it that we still viscerally feel kids are the chattel property of their parents? Is it that we still have the Victorian sense children are imperfectly developed grown-ups, not fully human until they come of age? Are we always to be the nation that believes in fixing things after they break, rather than avoiding the breakage through prevention? Can’t we find political will to rise above policies that are invariably reactive and rarely pre-emptive? Do we really believe grown-ups have bigger rights to abuse and neglect than children have to be protected from the abusers and neglecters? Yet isn't that totally short-sighted when the kids mostly outlive the parents and when we know abuse and neglect often roll from generation to generation?

My modest proposal

We know over half of all adult male prisoners were abused or neglected as children. We know fully half of obese women were sexually abused as children. We know a lack of prenatal care greatly increases the cost of remedial medical and other services after birth. We know education can break cycles of poverty and low adult achievement. We know these things and yet our nation consistently relegates the fate of children to the bottom of the totem pole of priorities. We appropriately spend billions of dollars to defend our nation but a relative handful of pennies to ensure it will be a safe home to valuable citizens for generations to come.

Let’s be honest with one another: There is no political will to put kids first. So let’s just agree to put them tenth by defining them as animals. It will be a huge step-up among national priorities for the abused and neglected kids who are currently not even standing on the ladder.

Oh, and by the way, if you think this idea is daft, there is an alternative: We could treat the kids as human and actually protect them better. That's why we have First Star. No point cursing the gathering darkness. Candles, anyone?

________________________________________________________
Peter Samuelson is a film producer, Founder Chairman of the Starlight Starbright Foundation (http://www.starlight.org/) and Founder President of the First Star Public Policy Initiative (http://www.firststar.org/). He can be reached at petersam@who.net