It seems that kids come last, nearly always. In the great American agenda, where resources are parceled out, the actual needs of children - as distinct from new sneakers or blueberry pie - seldom stand high.
As a nation we are not indifferent to kids; far from it. We cater to them, exploit them. We readily use kids as entertainment, woo them with gaudy commercials and provoke them with explicit films and music, with most of this pandering done for a profit. We enshrine kids - Tom Sawyer, the Bobbsey Twins, Holden Caulfield - in our literature and folklore.Yet when it comes to the problems of America's youngest and neediest kids, public attention tends to fade. The fact that millions of children are trapped in urban ghettos, malnourished and at early risk because of guns, drugs or simple neglect is not generally Topic A at most middle-class dinner tables. To most of us, ghettos are out of sight and mind, and ghetto kids are the most out of sight of all.
These thoughts were prompted the other day as a White House task force, submitting its report to President Bush, urged the nation to spend $500 million a year to reduce infant mortality. The U.S. infant death rate is higher than in 19 other countries, including East Germany and Singapore. A concerted new assault on infant illness, the task force said, could help prevent up to 40,000 infant deaths a year. Just as important, the health techniques applied could help reduce long-term ailments - bad eyesight, mental retardation, deafness - that afflict 100,000 newborns every year.
Besides the emotional suffering that such tragedies engender, the practical costs of childhood illness and infant death can be enormous. A chronically ill ghetto child may require long-term care, usually at public expense. Each preventable infant death deprives the economy, according to one estimate, of $380,000 in lost productivity.
This study sends a powerful message, calling on Bush to "build a fence of national urgency" around the infant mortality issue. It might be thought that the president would eagerly welcome the study's conclusion; after all, he kept saying during the 1988 campaign that America's children deserved a better start in the world. Initially, however, the White House declined to release the study, saying it needed more work.
Congress, where the special needs of children were given little recognition until recent years, has moved at its pace to write an important child-care bill. Congress finally gave these issues the high priority they deserved. The eventual bill is expected to enlarge the preschool Head Start program and expand tax credits for working mothers. Yet parallel House and Senate measures have been stuck in a conference committee for more than two months, and it's not clear what will finally emerge.
A new Census Bureau report could give this important bill a boost. The study found that nearly one-fourth of all American children are in organized day-care programs. A key finding: Those programs cost poverty-level families 25 percent of family income, on average, while the cost for better-off families is only 6 percent of income. The child-care bills in Congress would provide badly needed help where the needs are most acute.
Skeptics and fence-sitters - and there are many - might reflect that a damaged child all too readily grows up to be a damaged adolescent and a damaged adult, leveling immense costs on the rest of society. Drug abuse, street crime, hard-to-break welfare dependency, enfeebled school performance - these symptoms of a grim social pathology weaken our economy and challenge our national conscience. One of the best attacks on such ills is to block them before they can get started, and this means a concerted effort to see that very young children get off on the right foot.