Are Children Still the Future?

Something that I believe is very important, are the effects of poverty on children. This is important, in my opinion because society expects children to evolve into successful, constructive, law abiding citizens, then society should understand how living in certain conditions can restrain children from reaching these goals. I found an article written by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Greg Duncan who are both educators on child development, education, and social policy, outlining these effects. In regards to physical health, they found that poor children were only two-thirds as likely to be in excellent health and almost twice as likely to be in fair or poor health in comparison with non-poor children. Birth outcomes was also considered. They found that low birth weight leads to physical health, cognitive, and emotional problems, that can persist through childhood and adolescence. Serious physical disabilities, grade repetition, and learning disabilities are more likely if a child had low birth weight in infancy. Next Gunn and Duncan examined lead poisoning. This is important because, if you have or do live in a really old building, it is very likely that lead based materials, like paint were used to construct your home. It also ties into the reading for this week because we learned that the Horner Homes were cheaply built, so we can assume that there was some type of lead exposure not only there but in other developments as well. Lead exposure is linked to stunted growth, hearing loss, vitamin D metabolism damage, impaired blood production, and toxic effects on the kidneys. Although problems vary with length of exposure, harmful effects have been documented at low levels of exposure. Moving along, Gunn and Duncan reported that poor children score lower on standardized tests of IQ, verbal ability, and achievement. They also found that parental education, family structure, and neighborhood characteristics impact how much schooling is obtained. In close relation to outside forces measuring education obtainment emotional and behavior problems were studied. Externalizing behaviors include aggression, fighting, and acting out, and internalizing behaviors include anxiety, social withdrawal, and depression. In “There Are No Children Here”, we saw Lafayette become socially withdrawn because of the violence and pressures of poverty around him and we also saw Pharoah struggle with anxiety. He developed a stutter that became worse with every violent incident he witnessed. He also at times became socially withdrawn at when he would daydream to take himself away from everything going on around him. Another topic discussed in the article was the home environment. It was found that a child’s home environment, opportunities for learning, warmth of mother-child interactions, and the physical condition of the home can account for a substantial amount of cognitive issues seen with children. Using the Horner Homes as an example, we saw that there were scarce opportunities, if any at all. There was really no place safe for that the children could go and be safe. There weren’t many businesses in the community and the only people around that served as role models were the gang members. With no resources or leaders in the community it almost seems utterly impossible to escape poverty.

I chose this link because it is the article I referenced http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=53&articleid=287 

I chose this link because I think this documentary depicts some of the things we saw in There Are No Children Here and things that are occurring in Chicago https://youtu.be/pZRIKkm5yCw