This issue of The Future of Children explores childhood disability--its prevalence, nature, treatment, and consequences. With unprecedented numbers of U.S. children now being identified as having special medical and educational needs and with the nation's resources for addressing those needs increasingly constrained, the topic is timely. Public discussion of childhood disability, by the media, parents, scholars, and advocates alike, tends to emphasize particular causes of disability, such as autism, asthma, cystic fibrosis, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this volume, however, we focus not on individual disabilities, but rather on cross-cutting themes that apply more broadly to the issue of children with disabilities. To this end, we commissioned a group of experts to review research on childhood disability, including its definition (itself a challenge), its prevalence and trends over time (likewise), and the costs it imposes both on the individual child and on the child's family. Our contributors also consider disability within the context of the nation's educational, health insurance, and medical systems; the impact of emerging technologies on the experience of disability; and the definition of health care quality. The volume concludes with a discussion of the prevention of childhood disability. Themes of the Volume Out of the research presented in this volume, five broad themes emerge. These themes are related to defining and measuring disability; trends in disability; the growing importance of mental relative to physical health; the importance of families; and the fragmentation of services for children with disabilities. Defining Disability and Other Measurement Issues First, it is remarkably difficult to point to a consensus definition of disability. In the opening article of the issue Neal Halfon and Kandyce Larson, both of the University of California-Los Angeles, and Paul Newacheck and Amy Houtrow, both of the University of California-San Francisco, make the case for a definition that highlights the relationship between health, functioning, and the environment. Specifically, the authors propose that a disability be defined as "an environmentally contextualized health-related limitation in a child's existing or emergent capacity to perform developmentally appropriate activities and participate, as desired, in society." Defining disability as a limitation rather than a health condition per se highlights the social and technological context of the individual. In a world with electric wheelchairs, for example, a child with impaired mobility will be less disabled than he or she would be otherwise. It follows then that home and school environments can shape disability and that new technologies can either mitigate or exacerbate disability, as Paul Wise, of Stanford University, discusses in his article on the role of technology. The definition proposed by Halfon, Houtrow, Larson, and Newacheck also emphasizes that disabilit
{"title":"Children with Disabilities: Introducing the Issue","authors":"Janet Currie, R. Kahn","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2012.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2012.0001","url":null,"abstract":"This issue of The Future of Children explores childhood disability--its prevalence, nature, treatment, and consequences. With unprecedented numbers of U.S. children now being identified as having special medical and educational needs and with the nation's resources for addressing those needs increasingly constrained, the topic is timely. Public discussion of childhood disability, by the media, parents, scholars, and advocates alike, tends to emphasize particular causes of disability, such as autism, asthma, cystic fibrosis, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this volume, however, we focus not on individual disabilities, but rather on cross-cutting themes that apply more broadly to the issue of children with disabilities. To this end, we commissioned a group of experts to review research on childhood disability, including its definition (itself a challenge), its prevalence and trends over time (likewise), and the costs it imposes both on the individual child and on the child's family. Our contributors also consider disability within the context of the nation's educational, health insurance, and medical systems; the impact of emerging technologies on the experience of disability; and the definition of health care quality. The volume concludes with a discussion of the prevention of childhood disability. Themes of the Volume Out of the research presented in this volume, five broad themes emerge. These themes are related to defining and measuring disability; trends in disability; the growing importance of mental relative to physical health; the importance of families; and the fragmentation of services for children with disabilities. Defining Disability and Other Measurement Issues First, it is remarkably difficult to point to a consensus definition of disability. In the opening article of the issue Neal Halfon and Kandyce Larson, both of the University of California-Los Angeles, and Paul Newacheck and Amy Houtrow, both of the University of California-San Francisco, make the case for a definition that highlights the relationship between health, functioning, and the environment. Specifically, the authors propose that a disability be defined as \"an environmentally contextualized health-related limitation in a child's existing or emergent capacity to perform developmentally appropriate activities and participate, as desired, in society.\" Defining disability as a limitation rather than a health condition per se highlights the social and technological context of the individual. In a world with electric wheelchairs, for example, a child with impaired mobility will be less disabled than he or she would be otherwise. It follows then that home and school environments can shape disability and that new technologies can either mitigate or exacerbate disability, as Paul Wise, of Stanford University, discusses in his article on the role of technology. The definition proposed by Halfon, Houtrow, Larson, and Newacheck also emphasizes that disabilit","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"22 1","pages":"11 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2012.0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This issue of The Future of Children describes the challenges parents face in taking care of family responsibilities while also holding down a job and explores the implications of those challenges for child and family well-being. As children grow and develop, parents are the hub in a system of care to meet their needs, a system that includes extended family, preschools, schools, health care providers, community organizations, and others, but in which parents play the lead role. Often these same working parents have additional care responsibilities for other family members--in particular, the elderly--and are, for them too, the hub around which other caregivers, services, and programs revolve. Work-family challenges are as varied as the families that must deal with them, and they change in nature over time. Some working parents are better positioned than others to meet their family's care needs because they have higher incomes, more access to informal support from family members and others, or more support from employers or public policies. But no families, even middle- and high-income families, are immune from the challenge of balancing work and family obligations. Employers' needs and capacities are tremendously varied as well, particularly given the large role in the U.S. labor market of small, often family-owned businesses. Such wide variation suggests that meeting the work-family challenge will require flexibility and an array of options, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. The rising shares of women in the workforce and of families headed by single parents have made work-family issues especially prominent and challenging, as more employees, both men and women, face care responsibilities at home and fewer have a stay-at-home spouse to manage them. The work-family challenge has also been heightened by an increase in longevity that has boosted the share of the population that is elderly. Although many elderly Americans are healthy (and indeed provide assistance to their adult children and grandchildren), others require care and support from their family members. Although these demographic trends have been observed to some extent in every modern economy, the challenges of meeting work and family obligations are particularly problematic in the United States. Simply put, U.S. work and family policies have not been updated to reflect the new reality of American family life. The social welfare system in the United States, more so than in other countries, is designed around the idea that government assistance is a last resort, provided only after families have first used available family, community, and employer supports, or in cases where such supports do not exist. Economists generally endorse limited government involvement but identify several types of situations where government may need to step in. For example, in cases where the benefits of a policy would accrue not just to the individual family or employer but to society more generally,
{"title":"Work and Family: Introducing the Issue","authors":"J. Waldfogel, S. McLanahan","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2011.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2011.0011","url":null,"abstract":"This issue of The Future of Children describes the challenges parents face in taking care of family responsibilities while also holding down a job and explores the implications of those challenges for child and family well-being. As children grow and develop, parents are the hub in a system of care to meet their needs, a system that includes extended family, preschools, schools, health care providers, community organizations, and others, but in which parents play the lead role. Often these same working parents have additional care responsibilities for other family members--in particular, the elderly--and are, for them too, the hub around which other caregivers, services, and programs revolve. Work-family challenges are as varied as the families that must deal with them, and they change in nature over time. Some working parents are better positioned than others to meet their family's care needs because they have higher incomes, more access to informal support from family members and others, or more support from employers or public policies. But no families, even middle- and high-income families, are immune from the challenge of balancing work and family obligations. Employers' needs and capacities are tremendously varied as well, particularly given the large role in the U.S. labor market of small, often family-owned businesses. Such wide variation suggests that meeting the work-family challenge will require flexibility and an array of options, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. The rising shares of women in the workforce and of families headed by single parents have made work-family issues especially prominent and challenging, as more employees, both men and women, face care responsibilities at home and fewer have a stay-at-home spouse to manage them. The work-family challenge has also been heightened by an increase in longevity that has boosted the share of the population that is elderly. Although many elderly Americans are healthy (and indeed provide assistance to their adult children and grandchildren), others require care and support from their family members. Although these demographic trends have been observed to some extent in every modern economy, the challenges of meeting work and family obligations are particularly problematic in the United States. Simply put, U.S. work and family policies have not been updated to reflect the new reality of American family life. The social welfare system in the United States, more so than in other countries, is designed around the idea that government assistance is a last resort, provided only after families have first used available family, community, and employer supports, or in cases where such supports do not exist. Economists generally endorse limited government involvement but identify several types of situations where government may need to step in. For example, in cases where the benefits of a policy would accrue not just to the individual family or employer but to society more generally, ","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"21 1","pages":"14 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2011.0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Large numbers of immigrant children are experiencing serious problems with education, physical and mental health, poverty, and assimilation into American society. The purpose of this volume is to examine the well-being of these children and what might be done to improve their educational attainment, health status, social and cognitive development, and long-term prospects for economic mobility. The well-being of immigrant children is especially important to the nation because they are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. In 2008, nearly one in four youth aged seventeen and under lived with an immigrant parent, up from 15 percent in 1990. (1) Among children younger than nine, those with immigrant parents have accounted for virtually all of the net growth since 1990. (2) What these demographic trends portend for the future of immigrant children, however, is highly uncertain for several reasons. First, whether they achieve social integration and economic mobility depends on the degree of access they have to quality education from preschool through college. Second, these young immigrants are coming of age in an aging society that will require unprecedented social expenditures for health and retirement benefits for seniors. Third, large numbers of these youth now live in communities where few foreign-born residents have previously settled. That more than 5 million youth now reside in households of mixed legal status, where one or both parents are unauthorized to live and work in the United States, heightens still further the uncertainty about the futures of immigrant children. (3) Although nearly three-fourths of children who live with undocumented parents are citizens by birth, their status as dependents of unauthorized residents thwarts integration prospects during their crucial formative years. (4) Even having certifiably legal status is not enough to guarantee children's access to social programs if parents lack information about child benefits and entitlements, as well as the savvy to navigate complex bureaucracies. In this volume, we use the term immigrant youth to refer to children from birth to age seventeen who have at least one foreign-born parent. Because an immigrant child's birthplace--that is, whether inside or outside the United States--is associated with different rights and responsibilities and also determines eligibility for some social programs, to the extent possible contributors to the volume distinguish between youth who are foreign-born (designated the first generation) and those who were born in the United States to immigrant parents (the second generation). U.S.-born children whose parents also were born in the United States make up the third generation. (5) The Problem Contemporary immigrant youth are far more diverse by national origin, socioeconomic status, and settlement patterns than earlier waves of immigrants, and their growing numbers coincide with a period of high socioeconomic inequality. (6) Recent eco
{"title":"Immigrant Children: Introducing the Issue","authors":"M. Tienda, Ron Haskins","doi":"10.1353/FOC.2011.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.2011.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Large numbers of immigrant children are experiencing serious problems with education, physical and mental health, poverty, and assimilation into American society. The purpose of this volume is to examine the well-being of these children and what might be done to improve their educational attainment, health status, social and cognitive development, and long-term prospects for economic mobility. The well-being of immigrant children is especially important to the nation because they are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. In 2008, nearly one in four youth aged seventeen and under lived with an immigrant parent, up from 15 percent in 1990. (1) Among children younger than nine, those with immigrant parents have accounted for virtually all of the net growth since 1990. (2) What these demographic trends portend for the future of immigrant children, however, is highly uncertain for several reasons. First, whether they achieve social integration and economic mobility depends on the degree of access they have to quality education from preschool through college. Second, these young immigrants are coming of age in an aging society that will require unprecedented social expenditures for health and retirement benefits for seniors. Third, large numbers of these youth now live in communities where few foreign-born residents have previously settled. That more than 5 million youth now reside in households of mixed legal status, where one or both parents are unauthorized to live and work in the United States, heightens still further the uncertainty about the futures of immigrant children. (3) Although nearly three-fourths of children who live with undocumented parents are citizens by birth, their status as dependents of unauthorized residents thwarts integration prospects during their crucial formative years. (4) Even having certifiably legal status is not enough to guarantee children's access to social programs if parents lack information about child benefits and entitlements, as well as the savvy to navigate complex bureaucracies. In this volume, we use the term immigrant youth to refer to children from birth to age seventeen who have at least one foreign-born parent. Because an immigrant child's birthplace--that is, whether inside or outside the United States--is associated with different rights and responsibilities and also determines eligibility for some social programs, to the extent possible contributors to the volume distinguish between youth who are foreign-born (designated the first generation) and those who were born in the United States to immigrant parents (the second generation). U.S.-born children whose parents also were born in the United States make up the third generation. (5) The Problem Contemporary immigrant youth are far more diverse by national origin, socioeconomic status, and settlement patterns than earlier waves of immigrants, and their growing numbers coincide with a period of high socioeconomic inequality. (6) Recent eco","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"112 1","pages":"18 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.2011.0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. McLanahan, I. Garfinkel, Ronald B. Mincy, Elisabeth Donahuefragile
VOL. 20 / NO. 2 / FALL 2010 3 Nonmarital childbearing increased dramatically in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century, changing the context in which American children are raised. The proportion of all children born to unmarried parents grew tenfold over a seventy-year period—from about 4 percent in 1940 to nearly 40 percent in 2007. The overall impact of these changes has been greatest for African Americans and Hispanics, with seven out of ten black babies and half of Hispanic babies now being born to unmarried parents.1
{"title":"Introducing the Issue","authors":"S. McLanahan, I. Garfinkel, Ronald B. Mincy, Elisabeth Donahuefragile","doi":"10.1353/foc.2010.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2010.0005","url":null,"abstract":"VOL. 20 / NO. 2 / FALL 2010 3 Nonmarital childbearing increased dramatically in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century, changing the context in which American children are raised. The proportion of all children born to unmarried parents grew tenfold over a seventy-year period—from about 4 percent in 1940 to nearly 40 percent in 2007. The overall impact of these changes has been greatest for African Americans and Hispanics, with seven out of ten black babies and half of Hispanic babies now being born to unmarried parents.1","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"34 1","pages":"16 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/foc.2010.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
That the schedule for coming of age has been rather sharply revised both in the United States and more broadly throughout the industrialized world is by now widely recognized. Over the past decade, especially, the mass media have trumpeted the findings of a growing body of research showing that young people are taking longer to leave home, attain economic independence, and form families of their own than did their peers half a century ago. The forces behind this new timetable have been evident for several decades, but social science researchers, much less policy makers, were slow to recognize just how profound the change has been. A trickle of studies during the 1980s about the prolongation of young adulthood grew to a steady stream during the 1990s and then to a torrent during the first decade of the new millennium. (1) Now that researchers have shown how and why the timetable for becoming an adult has altered, policy makers must rethink whether the social institutions that once successfully educated, trained, and supported young adults are up to the task today. Changes in the coming-of-age schedule are, in fact, nothing new. A century or more ago, the transition to adulthood was also a protracted affair. In an agriculture-based economy, it took many young adults some time to gain the wherewithal to leave home and form a family. Formal education was typically brief because most jobs were still related to farming, the trades, or the growing manufacturing sector. By their teens, most youth were gainfully employed, but they frequently remained at home for a time, contributing income to their families and building resources to enter marriage and form a family. By contrast, after World War II, with opportunities for good jobs abundant, young Americans transitioned to adult roles quickly. In 1950, fewer than half of all Americans completed high school, much less attended college. Well-paying, often unionized jobs with benefits were widely available to males. The marriage rush and baby boom era at mid-century was stimulated not only by a longing to settle down after the war years but also by generous new government programs to help integrate veterans back into society. Today young adults take far longer to reach economic and social maturity than their contemporaries did five or six decades ago. In large part, this shift is attributable to the expansion of higher education beginning in the late 1960s. Employers have become increasingly reluctant to hire young people without educational credentials. Failing to complete high school all but relegates individuals to a life of permanent penury; even completing high school is hardly enough to ensure reasonable prospects. Like it or not, at least some postsecondary education is increasingly necessary. In short, education has become an ever more potent source of social stratification, dividing the haves and the have-nots, a theme in this volume to which we will return. The boom in higher education is not the on
{"title":"Introducing the Issue","authors":"Gordon Berlin, F. Furstenberg, M. Waters","doi":"10.1353/FOC.0.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.0.0042","url":null,"abstract":"That the schedule for coming of age has been rather sharply revised both in the United States and more broadly throughout the industrialized world is by now widely recognized. Over the past decade, especially, the mass media have trumpeted the findings of a growing body of research showing that young people are taking longer to leave home, attain economic independence, and form families of their own than did their peers half a century ago. The forces behind this new timetable have been evident for several decades, but social science researchers, much less policy makers, were slow to recognize just how profound the change has been. A trickle of studies during the 1980s about the prolongation of young adulthood grew to a steady stream during the 1990s and then to a torrent during the first decade of the new millennium. (1) Now that researchers have shown how and why the timetable for becoming an adult has altered, policy makers must rethink whether the social institutions that once successfully educated, trained, and supported young adults are up to the task today. Changes in the coming-of-age schedule are, in fact, nothing new. A century or more ago, the transition to adulthood was also a protracted affair. In an agriculture-based economy, it took many young adults some time to gain the wherewithal to leave home and form a family. Formal education was typically brief because most jobs were still related to farming, the trades, or the growing manufacturing sector. By their teens, most youth were gainfully employed, but they frequently remained at home for a time, contributing income to their families and building resources to enter marriage and form a family. By contrast, after World War II, with opportunities for good jobs abundant, young Americans transitioned to adult roles quickly. In 1950, fewer than half of all Americans completed high school, much less attended college. Well-paying, often unionized jobs with benefits were widely available to males. The marriage rush and baby boom era at mid-century was stimulated not only by a longing to settle down after the war years but also by generous new government programs to help integrate veterans back into society. Today young adults take far longer to reach economic and social maturity than their contemporaries did five or six decades ago. In large part, this shift is attributable to the expansion of higher education beginning in the late 1960s. Employers have become increasingly reluctant to hire young people without educational credentials. Failing to complete high school all but relegates individuals to a life of permanent penury; even completing high school is hardly enough to ensure reasonable prospects. Like it or not, at least some postsecondary education is increasingly necessary. In short, education has become an ever more potent source of social stratification, dividing the haves and the have-nots, a theme in this volume to which we will return. The boom in higher education is not the on","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"20 1","pages":"18 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.0.0042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
VOL. 19 / NO. 2 / FALL 2009 3 In 2007, the families of 1.86 million American children were investigated for child maltreatment, and 720,000 children—more than one in every hundred—were identified by state agencies as having been abused or neglected, most often by one of their parents. More than 1,500 children died as a result of maltreatment.1 Not all children who are maltreated come to the attention of the child protection system (CPS) and not all child deaths caused by maltreatment are recorded as such. These high rates of maltreatment are a cause for grave concern. Maltreatment often has profound adverse effects on children’s health and development. It can lead to permanent physical and mental impairments. A large body of research indicates that maltreated children are more likely than others to suffer later from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, poor physical health, and criminal activity.2
{"title":"Introducing the Issue","authors":"Christina Paxson, Ron Haskins","doi":"10.1353/foc.0.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.0.0034","url":null,"abstract":"VOL. 19 / NO. 2 / FALL 2009 3 In 2007, the families of 1.86 million American children were investigated for child maltreatment, and 720,000 children—more than one in every hundred—were identified by state agencies as having been abused or neglected, most often by one of their parents. More than 1,500 children died as a result of maltreatment.1 Not all children who are maltreated come to the attention of the child protection system (CPS) and not all child deaths caused by maltreatment are recorded as such. These high rates of maltreatment are a cause for grave concern. Maltreatment often has profound adverse effects on children’s health and development. It can lead to permanent physical and mental impairments. A large body of research indicates that maltreated children are more likely than others to suffer later from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, poor physical health, and criminal activity.2","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"19 1","pages":"17 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/foc.0.0034","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
American juvenile justice policy is in a period of transition. After a decade of declining juvenile crime rates, the moral panic that fueled the "get-tough" reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s--reforms that eroded the boundaries between juvenile and criminal court and exposed juvenile offenders to increasingly harsh punishments--has waned. State legislatures across the country have reconsidered punitive statutes they enacted with enthusiasm not so many years ago. What we may be seeing now is a pendulum that has reached its apex and is slowly beginning to swing back toward more moderate policies, as politicians and the public come to regret the high economic costs and ineffectiveness of the punitive reforms and the harshness of the sanctions. Several concrete indicators of this shift are noteworthy. First, in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2005 Roper v. Simmons opinion abolishing the juvenile death penalty, several state legislatures have repealed, or are considering repealing, statutes imposing sentences of life without parole on juvenile murderers. (1) Other states have scaled back, often in response to mounting economic costs, automatic transfer laws that send youth to the adult criminal system by statutory exclusion. (2) Many states have increased funding for community-based treatment programs as alternatives to institutional placement. (3) In a few states where youth under eighteen are prosecuted in adult criminal court instead of juvenile court, promising efforts are under way to increase the age to eighteen, as it is in most states. (4) Finally, several states have expanded procedural protection for juveniles in criminal court by enacting statutory provisions authorizing findings of incompetence to stand trial on the basis of developmental immaturity. (5) Although many of the punitive reforms of the 1990s still remain in place, a policy shift appears to have taken place. Several developments have converged to change the direction of the nation's youth crime policy. Among the most important was the steady decline in juvenile crime beginning in 1994. In the same way that the upward trend in juvenile violence during the 1980s set the stage for the spate of punitive legislation during the 1990s, this downward trend has opened the door to discussions about returning to more moderate policies. Advocates for reform also have been successful in focusing media and political attention on a broad range of emerging social science evidence about adolescent development and juvenile crime. Editorials and op-eds in local and national newspapers have pointed to this evidence in arguing that adolescents lack the emotional and mental maturity of adults, that juvenile offenders should be given a second chance, that the public supports rehabilitative efforts, and, perhaps most important, that trying juveniles as adults is simply not cost-effective. Evidence of the high economic cost to the government of the wholesale incarceration of juveniles with adults--to
{"title":"Introducing the Issue","authors":"L. Steinberg","doi":"10.1353/FOC.0.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FOC.0.0010","url":null,"abstract":"American juvenile justice policy is in a period of transition. After a decade of declining juvenile crime rates, the moral panic that fueled the \"get-tough\" reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s--reforms that eroded the boundaries between juvenile and criminal court and exposed juvenile offenders to increasingly harsh punishments--has waned. State legislatures across the country have reconsidered punitive statutes they enacted with enthusiasm not so many years ago. What we may be seeing now is a pendulum that has reached its apex and is slowly beginning to swing back toward more moderate policies, as politicians and the public come to regret the high economic costs and ineffectiveness of the punitive reforms and the harshness of the sanctions. Several concrete indicators of this shift are noteworthy. First, in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2005 Roper v. Simmons opinion abolishing the juvenile death penalty, several state legislatures have repealed, or are considering repealing, statutes imposing sentences of life without parole on juvenile murderers. (1) Other states have scaled back, often in response to mounting economic costs, automatic transfer laws that send youth to the adult criminal system by statutory exclusion. (2) Many states have increased funding for community-based treatment programs as alternatives to institutional placement. (3) In a few states where youth under eighteen are prosecuted in adult criminal court instead of juvenile court, promising efforts are under way to increase the age to eighteen, as it is in most states. (4) Finally, several states have expanded procedural protection for juveniles in criminal court by enacting statutory provisions authorizing findings of incompetence to stand trial on the basis of developmental immaturity. (5) Although many of the punitive reforms of the 1990s still remain in place, a policy shift appears to have taken place. Several developments have converged to change the direction of the nation's youth crime policy. Among the most important was the steady decline in juvenile crime beginning in 1994. In the same way that the upward trend in juvenile violence during the 1980s set the stage for the spate of punitive legislation during the 1990s, this downward trend has opened the door to discussions about returning to more moderate policies. Advocates for reform also have been successful in focusing media and political attention on a broad range of emerging social science evidence about adolescent development and juvenile crime. Editorials and op-eds in local and national newspapers have pointed to this evidence in arguing that adolescents lack the emotional and mental maturity of adults, that juvenile offenders should be given a second chance, that the public supports rehabilitative efforts, and, perhaps most important, that trying juveniles as adults is simply not cost-effective. Evidence of the high economic cost to the government of the wholesale incarceration of juveniles with adults--to","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"18 1","pages":"14 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FOC.0.0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rising juvenile crime rates during the 1970s and 1980s spurred state legislatures across the country to exclude or transfer a significant share of offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court, essentially redrawing the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems. Jeffrey Fagan examines the legal architecture of the new boundary-drawing regime and how effective it has been in reducing crime.The juvenile court, Fagan emphasizes, has always had the power to transfer juveniles to the criminal court. Transfer decisions were made individually by judges who weighed the competing interests of public safety and the possibility of rehabilitating young offenders. This authority has now been usurped by legislators and prosecutors. The recent changes in state law have moved large numbers of juveniles into the adult system. As many as 25 percent of all juvenile offenders younger than eighteen, says Fagan, are now prosecuted in adult court. Many live in states where the age boundary between juvenile and criminal court has been lowered to sixteen or seventeen.The key policy question is: do these new transfer laws reduce crime? In examining the research evidence, Fagan finds that rates of juvenile offending are not lower in states where it is relatively more common to try adolescents as adults. Likewise, juveniles who have been tried as adults are no less likely to re-offend than their counterparts who have been tried as juveniles. Treating juveniles as adult criminals, Fagan concludes, is not effective as a means of crime control.Fagan argues that the proliferation of transfer regimes over the past several decades calls into question the very rationale for a juvenile court. Transferring adolescent offenders to the criminal court exposes them to harsh and sometimes toxic forms of punishment that have the perverse effect of increasing criminal activity. The accumulating evidence on transfer, the recent decrease in serious juvenile crime, and new gains in the science of adolescent development, concludes Fagan, may be persuading legislators, policymakers, and practitioners that eighteen may yet again be the appropriate age for juvenile court jurisdiction.
{"title":"Juvenile Crime and Criminal Justice: Resolving Border Disputes","authors":"J. Fagan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1154670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1154670","url":null,"abstract":"Rising juvenile crime rates during the 1970s and 1980s spurred state legislatures across the country to exclude or transfer a significant share of offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court, essentially redrawing the boundary between the juvenile and adult justice systems. Jeffrey Fagan examines the legal architecture of the new boundary-drawing regime and how effective it has been in reducing crime.The juvenile court, Fagan emphasizes, has always had the power to transfer juveniles to the criminal court. Transfer decisions were made individually by judges who weighed the competing interests of public safety and the possibility of rehabilitating young offenders. This authority has now been usurped by legislators and prosecutors. The recent changes in state law have moved large numbers of juveniles into the adult system. As many as 25 percent of all juvenile offenders younger than eighteen, says Fagan, are now prosecuted in adult court. Many live in states where the age boundary between juvenile and criminal court has been lowered to sixteen or seventeen.The key policy question is: do these new transfer laws reduce crime? In examining the research evidence, Fagan finds that rates of juvenile offending are not lower in states where it is relatively more common to try adolescents as adults. Likewise, juveniles who have been tried as adults are no less likely to re-offend than their counterparts who have been tried as juveniles. Treating juveniles as adult criminals, Fagan concludes, is not effective as a means of crime control.Fagan argues that the proliferation of transfer regimes over the past several decades calls into question the very rationale for a juvenile court. Transferring adolescent offenders to the criminal court exposes them to harsh and sometimes toxic forms of punishment that have the perverse effect of increasing criminal activity. The accumulating evidence on transfer, the recent decrease in serious juvenile crime, and new gains in the science of adolescent development, concludes Fagan, may be persuading legislators, policymakers, and practitioners that eighteen may yet again be the appropriate age for juvenile court jurisdiction.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"18 1","pages":"118 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68148763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M edia technology is an integral part of children's lives in the twenty-first century. The world of electronic media, however , is changing dramatically. Television, which dominated the media world through the mid-1990s, now competes in an arena crowded with cell phones, iPods, video games, instant messaging, interactive multi-player video games, virtual reality sites, Web social networks, and e-mail. American children are exposed to all these media and more. The vast majority of children have access to multiple media. Virtually all have television and radio in their homes, and half have a television in their bedrooms. Most have Internet and video game access, and a significant portion has a cell phone and an iPod. The numbers joining social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace grow daily. Technological convergence, a hallmark of media use today, enables youth to access the same source from different, often portable , media platforms. Thanks to convergence , a teen can watch a television show on a computer long after the show has aired on television and can use a cell phone to surf the Internet. Children, particularly adolescents, thus have almost constant access to media— often at times and in places where adult supervision is absent. As a result, America's young people spend more time using media than they do engaging in any single activity other than sleeping. What do researchers know about how children and youth use electronic media and about how that use influences their lives? Is media technology a boon, one that leaves American children today better educated, more socially connected, and better informed than any previous generation of the nation's children? Or is it, as many voices warn, a hazard for vulnerable children—an endless source of advertising, portrayals of violence, and opportunities for dangerous encounters with strangers and possible exposure to pornogra-phy? The quantity and quality of research on these questions are uneven. Researchers have amassed a vast amount of solid information on older technologies, such as television and movies. But investigations of newer technologies and of the novel uses of existing technologies are far fewer in number and more
{"title":"Introducing the Issue","authors":"Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue","doi":"10.1353/foc.0.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.0.0008","url":null,"abstract":"M edia technology is an integral part of children's lives in the twenty-first century. The world of electronic media, however , is changing dramatically. Television, which dominated the media world through the mid-1990s, now competes in an arena crowded with cell phones, iPods, video games, instant messaging, interactive multi-player video games, virtual reality sites, Web social networks, and e-mail. American children are exposed to all these media and more. The vast majority of children have access to multiple media. Virtually all have television and radio in their homes, and half have a television in their bedrooms. Most have Internet and video game access, and a significant portion has a cell phone and an iPod. The numbers joining social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace grow daily. Technological convergence, a hallmark of media use today, enables youth to access the same source from different, often portable , media platforms. Thanks to convergence , a teen can watch a television show on a computer long after the show has aired on television and can use a cell phone to surf the Internet. Children, particularly adolescents, thus have almost constant access to media— often at times and in places where adult supervision is absent. As a result, America's young people spend more time using media than they do engaging in any single activity other than sleeping. What do researchers know about how children and youth use electronic media and about how that use influences their lives? Is media technology a boon, one that leaves American children today better educated, more socially connected, and better informed than any previous generation of the nation's children? Or is it, as many voices warn, a hazard for vulnerable children—an endless source of advertising, portrayals of violence, and opportunities for dangerous encounters with strangers and possible exposure to pornogra-phy? The quantity and quality of research on these questions are uneven. Researchers have amassed a vast amount of solid information on older technologies, such as television and movies. But investigations of newer technologies and of the novel uses of existing technologies are far fewer in number and more","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"18 1","pages":"10 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/foc.0.0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sara McLanahan is editor-in-chief of The Future of Children and director of the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University. Elisabeth Donahue is associate editor of The Future of Children and a lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. Ron Haskins is a senior editor of The Future of Children and a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Marriage has become a hot topic on the American domestic policy scene. The Bush administration is proposing to spend $1.5 billion over the next five years to increase “healthy” marriages.1 Gays and lesbians are demanding the right to marry.2 A few states are reconsidering no-fault divorce laws and experimenting with new types of “covenant marriage.”3 And legislators are scrutinizing tax and transfer policies for “marriage penalties.”4 These initiatives have been spurred by changes in marriage and childbearing during the latter part of the twentieth century and by mounting social science evidence that these changes are not in the best interests of children.
{"title":"Introducing the Issue","authors":"Ron Haskins, I. Sawhill","doi":"10.1353/foc.2007.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2007.0017","url":null,"abstract":"Sara McLanahan is editor-in-chief of The Future of Children and director of the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University. Elisabeth Donahue is associate editor of The Future of Children and a lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. Ron Haskins is a senior editor of The Future of Children and a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Marriage has become a hot topic on the American domestic policy scene. The Bush administration is proposing to spend $1.5 billion over the next five years to increase “healthy” marriages.1 Gays and lesbians are demanding the right to marry.2 A few states are reconsidering no-fault divorce laws and experimenting with new types of “covenant marriage.”3 And legislators are scrutinizing tax and transfer policies for “marriage penalties.”4 These initiatives have been spurred by changes in marriage and childbearing during the latter part of the twentieth century and by mounting social science evidence that these changes are not in the best interests of children.","PeriodicalId":51448,"journal":{"name":"Future of Children","volume":"17 1","pages":"16 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/foc.2007.0017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66360411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"法学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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