The Kids Are All Right

Peggy Noonan's "We're Scaring Our Children to Death" op-ed in Friday's WSJ is both nauseating and totally nonsensical. The latter, because Noonan fluctuates between suggesting that the world is actually a more dangerous place for kids these days, and suggesting the "culture" is exposing kids to too much scary (and vulgar!) stuff to early. But there's a huge difference between these two potential problems, and without clarity around that, Noonan's views on the subject are meaningless.

Then there's this: "But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves." I'm sorry, but modern Americans are living at a time of a-historical protection of children and preoccupation with children and their needs. I'm not saying we shouldn't protect kids, but for most of human history, close quarters and lack of privacy meant children were exposed early and regularly to the realities of sex, violence and death. Today's parents are spending more time with their kids than anytime since researchers started keeping track, and fathers in particular are spending more time with their kids than they did in the fabled 1950s 1960s. Educational toys and services for kids from birth on are rapidly-growing, multi-billion dollar industries. Child and youth indicators have been improving, not getting worse (although in recent years they've hit a troubling plateau). Kids are inherently vulnerable, growing up is really hard, and I believe strongly that society needs to do more to support parents and kids--but we shouldn't be nostalgic about some mythical past golden age of innocent childhood.

There is a real problem with media overhyping of threats to children, many of which are relatively rare or not as deadly as they're made out to be. Everyone from the producers of Dateline's seemingly constant airings of "To Catch a Predator," to NYT editors who feel the need to daily proclaim the difficulty of getting into Ivy League schools knows that scaring the beejezus out of parents is one of the best ways to gain readership and make a buck. But this kind of overhyping has bad consequences for parents, kids, and sometimes public policy.

But the most offensive thing is the class spin Noonan tries to employ here:

I am not sure the makers of our culture fully notice what they are doing, what impact their work is having, because the makers of our culture are affluent. Affluence buys protection. You can afford to make your children safe. You can afford the constant vigilance needed to protect your children from the culture you produce, from the magazine and the TV and the CD and the radio. You can afford the doctors and tutors and nannies and mannies and therapists, the people who put off the TV and the Internet and offer conversation.

Apparently Noonan doesn't understand that TV sets don't come with a meter that requires you to pay in order to turn off the set or change the channel. More to the point, this faux concern with inequality is downright nauseating coming from someone who thinks that cutting taxes for the rich is more important than providing health care for poor kids or decent childcare for low-income working folks. Noonan's unwillingness to raise a finger or voice concern about child wellbeing other than when it's a convenient excuse to chastise (presumably, liberal) "makers of our culture" demonstrates that she is the one who really cares more about politics and money than children.