From the earliest accounts of battles in our ancient history, to reports pouring into our news feeds today, we have learned about the ways in which our children have been used as a shield in battle. Ancient armies forced children to run in front of them on the field, counting on their opponents to have more decency and morality than they had, and to hesitate just long enough to be killed, themselves.
The use of children as a shield to gain an advantage in battle can be observed today in the slightly more subtle wars of political gamesmanship. To claim the title “pro-family”, “pro-life” or “pro-child”, the current administration is offering a $5,000 “baby bonus” to increase our population and reward women for having children. Trump disgustingly calls himself the “fertilization president”. Yuck. Not to be outdone, Elon “Daddy” Musk is actually doing his best to increase the population, willy-nilly, perhaps to make certain he always has a cute prop to carry everywhere on his shoulders.
This is a page straight out of the dictator playbook. Hitler, Stalin and Putin all offered bonuses, hero medals and empty national acclaim to mothers willing to have children. To pile it on, Trump reports he is considering a preferential scale for Fulbright scholarships to benefit those who are married and have children.
For those of you who, like me, are sci-fi fans, this is not, in any way, a new concept, although fictional worlds are much more forthcoming about their motivations. In otherworldly fiction, it is made clear that every dictator needs a high and continuing birthrate in order to guarantee a steady supply of new soldiers for his army and a continuing population of mothers who will, in turn, make even more soldiers, as well as the next generation of baby-makers. The current culture of our country has long adopted this approach, as well, unthinkingly preparing our children for these roles by making sure that little girls were brought up with dolls and little boys were brought up with guns.
Many societies, such as ours, also punish anyone who attempts to interfere with the national duties of fertilization and birth. We outlaw abortion, and, when that overreaching is found to be unconstitutional under a right to privacy, we patiently wait fifty years and outlaw it again.
Historically, we have gone even further. In the past, we outlawed any treatment that could be used to prevent pregnancy. We even banned any discussion of it, or offer of help. Check out the history of birth control in the US, the long struggles of Margaret Sanger to make it legal, and the Supreme Court decision that established the right to privacy–Griswold vs Connecticut.
Even earlier in the history of the United States, in Massachusetts in 1692-3, women who practiced natural medicine, which included using herbs and natural mixtures to help women avoid pregnancy, as well as natural ways to end an unwanted pregnancy, were accused of being witches. They were charged by an ignorant population with cursing women and making them barren. Inevitably found guilty, they were drowned and burnt.
Today, little has changed. Oh, the name calling is different and we no longer burn witches, but there are still stiff punishments for helping to end a pregnancy, and obtaining one is becoming ever more difficult in many of our states. The same may eventually be true of birth control.
To sugar-coat the motives of the rulers and their zombie followers, these bans are propped up by the virtuous-sounding goals of protecting and growing families and making certain that women are happy and fulfilled by carrying out their natural duties. Primarily, the despots hide behind a pro-child message. In reality, however, they are simply hiding behind the children to protect their own aims, the same as those ancient armies.
They care nothing about actually caring for children or helping their families. Five thousand dollars isn’t even a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of pregnancy, birth, and raising children. This gesture is performative virtue.
They know, however, that such a bonus is attractive, given the difficulties women have in supporting their children. Full-time working mothers are paid only 74 cents for every dollar paid to men. For mothers of color, the gap is even bigger. It is a birth-punishment of a sorts. Even worse, the minute these children are born, they are abandoned by the very authorities who worked so hard to make certain that they came into the world.
And Then Lose Them
Support begins and ends with the showcase bonus. We all know that this administration has gutted every program that provides benefits to our children, though little attention has been focused on the details. Planned and seriously proposed cuts to CHIP and Medicaid, which provide health coverage for over 37 million children in the US, will gut the primary source of healthcare for our children, including impoverished children, kids with special needs, and those in foster care. Medicaid also covers the costs of healthcare for births, which means that these cuts will make it less safe to have the children the government is encouraging us to have. CHIP also helps parents pay the bloated costs of private health insurance premiums that are their gateway to care. There will be less access to preventive care, mental health and delayed diagnosis of chronic conditions. Children will suffer. Some will die.
The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been decimated. Funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children, responding to reports of missing children and preventing youth violence has disappeared. Thousands who supervised education, child care, and child protective services have been terminated. Funding for school meals and school safety has been cut to ribbons.
In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services is now run by an anti-children’s-health maniac. Want to abandon our children even more completely? Create a completely debunked myth, as RFK Jr has done, that vaccines cause autism and other kinds of malfunctions, and, suddenly, over a thousand children have contracted measles as of May 5th. Measles! A disease that was completely under control until Kennedy was appointed the head of HHS. 96% of those contracting measles this year were unvaccinated.
We already have an abundance of proof as to the dangers caused by lack of basic medical care. Not satisfied, the administration and its state clones are adding new threats to our young people’s well-being by rolling back long-standing child labor laws.
28 states have introduced bills to loosen the protective restrictions on using young teenagers in the workforce, and 12 have adopted the legislation. Provisions include lowering the minimum age to 14 for working in dangerous industries, allowing youth to operate potentially crippling machinery, extending work hours to allow more labor during school days, allowing work to go later at night, and even eliminating work permits. Where is our conscience?
Between 1908 and 1924, photographer Lewis Hine captured hundreds of photos for the National Child Labor Committee, depicting the conditions under which children were forced to work. The pictures, by revealing the children’s extreme youth, begrimed faces and injured bodies, up close and personal, pricked the conscience of America until the work was outlawed or controlled in every state. The photos reside in the Library of Congress which, coincidentally, has just acquired a new Acting Librarian of Congress, another Trump sycophant with no experience. Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, led the president’s defense team in last year’s criminal trial which found the president guilty of 34 felony counts. Great Librarian, huh?
Of course, he may be the perfect overseer for erasing the precious photos of child labor from the past. Not possible you say? Remember removing history from the Naval Academy Library, the Arlington National Cemetery records, and many records related to the accomplishments and history of non-white, non-male heroes? So how will we have access to images of the current, increasing, juvenile workforce? To date, no one is detailing this latest assault on childhood.
Is this how we care for our precious resource? Or is this the natural result of this administration’s devotion to increasing the birthrate to serve their needs.
Add to this the deportations of infants, the separation of children from their immigrant parents, assaults by ICE thugs wrestling children down to the pavement, tying and arresting them, and placing them in detention facility cages, as was done during Trump’s first term. Don’t be fooled. This is not a pro-child set of policies and this administration and the states who slavishly follow it care nothing for our children. It is critical that we pay attention, that we constantly include these issues in our assessment and understanding of the danger posed by, and the cruelty casually applied by, our current “leaders”. We have to fight back every day in every way. Do it for the kids, and for our future.
