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Even so, despite activism by Edelman and her allies, most political leaders still don't do what she wants them to do: ask, every time they cast a vote or cut a dollar, "How will this affect kids?" And even if they did, they would not necessarily answer the question Edelman's way because of the growing sense, embraced by both major presidential candidates, that government has its limitations. "Read between the lines of everything Marian Wright Edelman says, and what you get is this," says Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The problem affecting kids is material poverty, so if we give the family more money for housing and food, things will turn out better for the kids. The reality is that despite 30 years of this effort, there is no evidence whatsoever that [this] has a positive effect on kids at all, except for cases of gross malnutrition."
In the broadest sense, Edelman's positions are extremely popular. Who, after all, would ever stand against children? In a recent TIME/CNN poll, 73% of those surveyed favor having more of their tax dollars go to programs that benefit the young. For the most part, that sentiment has proved beneficial. Since Edelman launched the Children's Defense Fund in 1973, American children are doing better in such areas as math and science proficiency, immunizations and infant survival rates, thanks in part to government action.
But as America polarizes into a land of rich and poor, the number of children on the losing side is growing at an alarming rate. According to a report released last month by the Department of Health and Human Services, the percentage of children in "extreme poverty" (with a family income less than half the official poverty level) has doubled since 1975: it now stands at 10%, or 6.3 million children. The ranks of the merely poor include 1 in every 5 children in the U.S. In 1992 there were 850,000 substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect, while the homicide rate for teens more than doubled between 1970 and 1992.
Such numbers are not just a snapshot of how we live today. To experts who understand the trajectory of childhood development, the statistics predict a grim future for American society. As Douglas Nelson, executive director of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, puts it, "It may well be that the nation cannot survive--as a decent place to live, as a world-class power or even as a democracy--with such high rates of children growing into adulthood unprepared to parent, unprepared to be productively employed and unprepared to share in mainstream aspirations."