Families With Children

This year's recession hit a lot of Americans. But while most of us are waiting out a temporary slump, America's children have been in a decade-long depression. The children of 1992 lead less healthy, more dangerous and poorer lives than the children of 1980.Over the past decade, America worsened in six key indicators of child well-being. The rate of babies born at lower birth weight is 3 percent higher today than it was in 1980. The rate of births to single teen-agers is 14 percent higher.

Despite Maryland's relative prosperity, the well-being of children here lags behind the national average, a report being released today concludes.The children of Maryland were more likely than average to die in infancy, be killed as teen-agers or live with only one parent, the report says.Maryland was ranked 29th in children's welfare, even though the state's families with children have the nation's fifth-highest median income."Maryland has the opportunity to do so much more. We rank fifth in wealth.

Despite Maryland's relative prosperity, the well-being of children here lags behind the national average, a report being released today concludes.The children of Maryland were more likely than average to die in infancy, be killed as teen-agers or live with only one parent, the report says.Maryland was ranked 29th in children's welfare, even though the state's families with children have the nation's fifth-highest median income."Maryland has the opportunity to do so much more. We rank fifth in wealth.

WASHINGTON -- A large majority of two-earner families with children had to work harder simply to stay in place during the 1980s, according to a new congressional study that documents the widely felt syndrome of "middle-class squeeze."The study illustrates a sharp disparity between those who prospered in the 1980s and those who did not. And it is particularly striking because it looked at the incomes of of families with two wage earners and children -- a group many assumed had fared better during the 1980s than individuals or one-wage-earner families.

CUTTING WELFARE payments to encourage poor families to keep their kids in school and see that they get regular medical checkups won't make the poor better parents -- only more desperate ones.Granted, no one is happy with the present system -- not the middle class, nor the blue collar working class nor even welfare recipients. Increasingly, working Americans are telling their elected officials that they are tired of government "giveaways" to people who can't or won't work. And the politicians are listening.

A True 'Helper'Editor: In his article, "Death's Little Helper and His Suicide Machine," published by The Sun on Oct. 30, Arthur Caplan asks why America has not expressed the same outrage toward Dr. Jack Kevorkian for assisting three women to commit suicide as it did toward the health-care professional who infected his patient with AIDS. I think I have the answer for him.Kimberly Bergalis did not want to die, while Janet Adkins, Sherry Miller and Marjorie Wantz did. Ms. Bergalis went to her dentist for help and he betrayed her. When Ms. Adkins, Ms. Miller and Ms. Wantz asked Dr. Kevorkian for his help, he gave it to them.

The National Commission on Children has come to the unanimous conclusion that this nation is collectively guilty of child abuse.Not child abuse in the usual sense of physical or sexual assault, although that is bad enough, but child abuse through parental neglect, poverty, poor health care, homelessness, divorce, child birth out of wedlock, inadequate pre-schooling, violence-oriented entertainment and, implicitly, the diversion of resources from the youngest...

If you're tempted to think of the late 1940s and 1950s as a Golden Age of family life, here are some statistics worth pondering: In 1948, as the baby boom was starting up, the tax exemption for one dependent amounted to 42 percent of the nation's per capita personal income. A family of four -- a father, mother and two children -- would have little or no tax liability.By 1984, the exemption for one dependent was worth only 7.6 percent of the nation's per capita personal income. The situation was marginally better by 1990, when a major tax reform law and a significant increase in the personal exemption had increased the value of the dependent exemption to 11.1 percent.

When it comes to America's disadvantaged, stereotypes are deceiving. The latest shocking revelations come from a report by the Children's Defense Fund which found that one in five American children is poor. That's not just urban America crying out of the statistics, either.In analyzing 1989 census reports, the fund found that the inner-city black child of a mother on welfare simply is not the typical poor child. Only one in 10 of this country's poor children is urban and black; the fastest-growing poverty problem is in the suburbs, where a fourth of all poor children live.

The traditional family continued to splinter in Maryland during the 1980s with more divorces, more single-parent families and more elderly people living alone, the U.S. Census Bureau has reported.More than 1 in 5 Maryland children under age 18 -- over 240,000 in all -- lived with single parents, nearly twice the proportion of two decades ago, according to the population and housing data released by the Maryland Office of Planning.Black families were particularly hard hit: Single parents headed more black Maryland families with children than married couples did in 1990, the census shows.