The Future of Us by Irwin Redlener

Author:Irwin Redlener
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, Biography & Autobiography/Personal Memoirs, SOC047000, Social Science/Children’s Studies
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2017-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

At Home, in Danger: The Scourge of Abused Children

The transition from Lee County, Arkansas, to Dade County, Florida, had been relatively smooth, though I often missed the rough-and-tumble of caring for a poor community in an environment that felt more like a nineteenth-century segregated Southern community than what one should expect in America in the second half of the twentieth century. That said, any downside of living in South Florida’s heat, humidity, and lack of seasonal change was mitigated by the ability to see my boys on a regular basis. That was worth everything.

In many abundantly obvious ways, life and work in Florida could not have more different than living and working in the backwoods of Lee County. Miami, a bustling, bilingual, bicultural metropolis had the culture, the buzz, and the glamour of a rising urban force; rural Arkansas was an impoverished, forgotten corner of a region that could easily be seen as on the very brink of absolute hopelessness.

Yet I was struck by some commonalities between the urban vibrancy of Miami and the rural isolation of Lee County. Hard-core rural poverty with shacks, outdoor privies, swarming flies, and barefoot babies on the front porch were the images from my time in Arkansas. Miami’s inner-city neighborhoods were the urban version of severely disadvantaged communities: city blocks rife with crime, drugs, and sullen despair. Both places had their share of deep-seated poverty—one seen in abandoned plantations and soybean fields, the other in downtrodden homes and run-down schools. In essence, poverty is poverty, in terms of the impact on children and families. Both environments had inordinate numbers of children who were marginalized because of race and/or economic disparity.

As far as I could see, neither Dade County nor Lee County showed any real interest in understanding or addressing the needs and aspirations of children who were struggling. Both communities, as different as they could be, were doing a very poor job of protecting children who were acutely suffering. In Arkansas, people would bring undernourished infants to my office in infant carriers made of cardboard boxes; in Miami, battered and abused kids were brought in by ambulance to my hospital’s emergency rooms and the pediatric intensive care unit. In both places, too many children were starting off life already behind, with too many impediments to surviving childhood with their dreams and potential intact.

Among the issues I took on as a junior faculty member in Miami was the challenge of preventing and treating child abuse and neglect, a professionally complex and emotionally charged issue that many of my colleagues avoided at all costs. This was an issue that I found highly compelling, in no small part due to the influence of Dr. Henry Kempe in Denver, who had been such an inspiration during my training.

In the early 1970s, child maltreatment was neither sufficiently recognized nor reckoned with by government officials or the public in general. The media would cover a dramatic case of gross abuse, as it would any horrific crime story, but not as the social and public health challenge that it actually was.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.