United States one of worst on children's rights

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PHOTOS DOCUMENT SUFFERING OF WORLD'S CHILDREN: [All Edition]

Stockinger, Jacob. Madison Capital Times; Madison, Wis. [Madison, Wis]17 Apr 1998: 13A.

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Maybe it has never been different for children, whether they live in the barrios of Latin America or the slums of Asia, the inner cities of the United States or the plains of Africa.

In "Lost Futures: Our Forgotten Children" (Aperture, 176 pages, 120 pictures, $45), two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Stan Grossfeld of the Boston Globe travels around the world to show how much it is suffering and need -- not protection and love -- that link the children of the world together.

Grossfeld often uses snapshot statistics to make his point: 15 million children living in poverty in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world; 200 million children under the age of 15 used worldwide as laborers; 800,000 child prostitutes working in Thailand's sex industry; street children numbering 7 million in Brazil and 40 million in all of Latin America.

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Jacob Stockinger is the features editor of The Capital Times.

Maybe it has never been different for children, whether they live in the barrios of Latin America or the slums of Asia, the inner cities of the United States or the plains of Africa.

Maybe every society or politician has opportunistically touted children as the precious hope of the future, and then turned around and treated them hypocritically as expendable beings not worth the same degree of investment devoted to, say, national defense or political campaigns.

Whatever the case, a series of recent books by photographers who want to make a difference -- who are not the traditional objective observers, but instead advocates and activists with a viewpoint who put their royalties where their mouth is -- have tackled the problem of worldwide abuse and neglect of children with the same zeal that war correspondents have historically brought to their task of documenting adult suffering.

All of the volumes illustrate the problem; some offer solutions; all are moving in their depictions of the human -- and inhumane -- conditions that so many children face.

In "Lost Futures: Our Forgotten Children" (Aperture, 176 pages, 120 pictures, $45), two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Stan Grossfeld of the Boston Globe travels around the world to show how much it is suffering and need -- not protection and love -- that link the children of the world together.

Grossfeld often uses snapshot statistics to make his point: 15 million children living in poverty in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world; 200 million children under the age of 15 used worldwide as laborers; 800,000 child prostitutes working in Thailand's sex industry; street children numbering 7 million in Brazil and 40 million in all of Latin America.

But not all of Grossfeld's attention is paid to vast numbers. The viewer also meets Baby, a 14-year-old prostitute in Seattle who represents one of the 1.3 million runaways in the United States each year.

Which countries rank worst?

"The U.S. is pretty near the bottom," says Grossfeld, noting that the United States hasn't even ratified the United Nations convention on the rights of children to basic freedoms such as health and education. The only other country not to do so, he notes, is Somalia, which doesn't even have a functioning government.

But the larger impact of Grossfeld's work, which features a foreword by Muhammad Ali and a message from Mother Teresa, comes not from the numbers or words -- which do indeed tell a story and tell it eloquently -- but from the pictures. That is where the expression of a single eye, of a child's tiny hand layered against the larger palm of an adult, makes the difference. Above all, look directly into the children's eyes, as Grossfeld's lens does, for that is where their story is told.

If the United States is indeed one of the worst violators of children's rights, the dilemma has found an eloquent spokesman and opponent in Stephen Shames.

Several years ago, in "Outside the Dream," free-lancer Shames documented child poverty in America. "If that book was the problem, my new book is the solution," said Shames about "Pursuing the Dream: What Helps Families and Their Children Succeed" (Aperture, 160 pages, $40), which includes a preface by Michael Jordan and an introduction by Roger Rosenblatt.

Done with the help of the Family Resource Coalition in Chicago, Shames documents a number of programs around the country that seem to be succeeding in pulling children back from the brink of disaster. From coast to coast, and also including Hawaii, Shames captures children in the process of being rescued and redeemed by a future that appears to be blossoming open rather than closing shut.

Shames uses narrative, dialogue and description to explain how it works. In a sense, the pictures are less dramatic and powerful than Grossfeld's or even than those in Shames' own first volume; but then joy and hope are harder to capture with drama than are despair and pain. Still, there is something to be said for a less dramatic normalizing of children's plight that does have a joyous everydayness about it.

What stands out in Shames' latest volume is not the isolated children of the first volume -- often as isolated by the camera as they are by the society -- but the number of pictures in which children interact with each other and with adults.

At a time when school referendums are failing and the promises of tax cuts make citizens forget their civic duty to invest in children, these images of cooperation, compassion, empathy and love serve as testimonials to the effectiveness of community child-rearing. Going beyond a cliche of child advocates these days, one might add: Not only does it take an entire village to raise a child, but the entire village will pay dearly if it fails to treat its children well.

What do children need? Most viewers know the answer, because they have seen it work in their own case. Children everywhere need a caring and loving family, schools that work, health care, enough food and shelter, and participation with the community.

What children need, most of all, is us -- just at a time when we seem to be so busy and self-preoccupied that we end up turning our backs on them.

It is often assumed children are succeeding when in reality they are failing. But the reverse also happens.

Consider "The Youngest Parents" (DoubleTake-Norton, 192 pages, $27.50), a collaborative documentary by the prize-winning child psychiatrist, sociologist and oral historian Robert Coles and pediatrician-photographer John Moses and photographer Jocelyn Lee.

It has long been assumed that children who become teenage parents are a story of failure. What Coles' interviews have taught him is that many of these teens consciously choose this fate as a way to rediscover the hope and childhood they feel their own upbringing has robbed them of. Dropping out of school, finding it difficult to get a job, these young parents have literally cast their lot with the next generation.

One often hears of the teenage failures. Here too are successes in images that ring of family values and bonding. Their words are eloquent and hopeful, and whatever sadness one sees in these pictures -- in which many young mothers and fathers look overwhelmed -- probably comes not from the parenthood per se, but from the knowledgethat so few of society's resources will go into helping these young parents. Just imagine if we supported young parents with the same amount of funding and media attention that we devote to young criminals.

But in the end, one suspects, the country's leaders will continue to spend more time fulfilling expectations of failure than success.

Americans like to say, with almost mantra-like regularity, that we are a nation that loves its children. But if you look at what we do and not what we say, you have to wonder.

It is the nature of photojournalism to be an essentially behaviorist art: The lens sees what we do, not what we say.

Charting that discrepancy by putting it down on paper for all to see -- as these three volumes do so movingly and convincingly -- can have no higher moral purpose than improving the welfare of children.


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STAN GROSSFELD A girl and herfriend at a kindergarten for AIDS children in Romania.


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