When it comes to raising children, human biology doesn’t always go hand in hand with emotional maturity, wisdom, and earning power. If it did, I could confidently say that I thought the best age to start having children was in our late 40s or early 50s.
Well, it’s clear there are a few problems with that, which is why they say it takes a village, or at least an extended family and a few decent neighbors, to raise a child. That’s true in any case — but is especially true for children whose parents are under 24.
These are households where there often isn’t a lot of education or money. Nearly one-fifth of these young parents lack even a high school degree. Nearly two-fifths have no job, and they have a median household income of $23,000 dollars, right at the poverty level.
We need to help these kids with kids, or we will pay heavily in the long run.
Some years ago, my own brother, who I see as a real hero, adopted a two-year-old child whose birth mother had neglected and didn’t talk to him, so that the baby had not been mentally stimulated; he had essentially no language skills. It has taken years and massive amounts of therapy, but I think he will be all right. However, we don’t know how many brain cells he lost.
We do know that children between birth and their third birthdays create about a million new neural connections per second. That’s right, per second. They need parents who work to stimulate their growing brains, and who have enough financial resources to be reasonably secure enough to allow them to have the time and the emotional energy needed to be supportive parents.
This is all detailed in the new Kids Count policy report, Opening Doors for Young Parents, far more completely and eloquently than I can put it here.
The good news is that Michigan has, proportionally, slightly fewer young adults who are parents than the national average. But these young parents still have 100,000 kids. We need to help them for our own good. Never mind if you don’t share the natural compassion we all would feel if some narrow partisan ideology hadn’t blunted our humanity.
Forget compassion; think enlightened self-interest. How much do you think it would cost to give these parents and children the help they need? I’m not sure, but I can tell you this – much less than it will cost taxpayers and society not to have these folks as fully productive citizens.
Yes, we also should continue to spread the message that delaying childbearing is a good idea. But the more pressing problem is the kids and parents who are here now. This policy reports makes it clear that Michigan needs to do three things. Help these parents with child rearing and learning the skills needed for child-rearing, including transportation and housing assistance, yes.
But beyond that, we need to engage these young parents in finishing their high school degrees where they haven’t, and do whatever we can to nudge them towards a career with potential, by providing what this report calls “tailored mentoring and wraparound support.”
This is not charity, but a common sense investment in our own futures. If we can help keep these too-young families together, reduce stress on the children and help the parents become financially successful and provide a stable home, we’ll all be better off.
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