It is difficult to prove that the United States has actually become a more dan- gerous place for children than it was at any time in the past. Certainly chil- dren are more protected now from industrial accidents than they were before child labor laws were passed. Improved medical care and advancements in medical science mean that fewer children die from life-threatening diseases.
But there are pervasive threats to children today. In some communities, children are at risk because of criminal violence that spills over and hurts innocent victims as well as the intended targets. James Garbarino, the direc- tor of the Erickson Institute, compares some inner-city communities to war zones and finds that children are similarly affected in both environments. In his own city of Chicago, the rate of serious assault increased 400 percent from 1974 to 1991 (1992, ix). Crime, however, is not the only source of danger for contemporary children. Some are at risk from violence inflicted on them by their own parents. Others live in environments that are life-threatening because of air pollution, toxic waste, or uncontrolled street traffic.
Garbarino’s work with children in dangerously violent situations has convinced him that there are two significant dimensions of danger. One is objective, the actual likelihood that an individual may suffer harm or injury
because of a particular situation. The other dimension is subjective, the appre- hension that harm is imminent, a feeling of impending danger (p. 4). This subjective feeling of anxiety or fear can also be traumatizing to children.
Children’s healthy physical, social, and emotional development depends on their feeling secure enough at home and in their neighborhood to explore, play, and form relationships with other children and adults. They must feel safe in school in order to learn. Children who feel safe are more likely to grow up to be confident, competent adults than those who constantly worry about impending danger. In other words, even the perception of danger can be dam- aging to a child.
There is evidence that many children do worry about impending dangers of all kinds. Gene Del Vecchio (1997), an expert in marketing products to children, observes that children today are more aware of the adult world than children were in the past. Their sources of knowledge include both adult and children’s news media; they also acquire a great deal of misinformation, rumor, and false knowledge from their peers. Del Vecchio quotes a 1996 Roper Youth Report that rank-ordered the concerns of children as follows:
AIDS, kidnapping, drugs, homelessness, neighborhood crime, racial discrim- ination, pollution, divorce, nuclear war, having to fight a war, and the amount of TV violence (p. 129). Newsweekrecently reported that 80 percent of our country’s ten- to twelve-year-old boys and girls want to know more about being safe from violence; 73 percent want to learn more about AIDS (Kantrowitz and Wingert 1999, 67).
At least some of children’s fears are justified. Teenagers, for example, who account for only 14 percent of the population age twelve and over, are the victims of 30 percent of all violent crime. In 1991, one of every ten 19- year-olds had been a victim of a violent crime. Twenty-five percent of all vio- lent crimes against young people occur at home; 23 percent at school (Sanders and Mattson 1998, 140-41). More than 20 percent of all American middle schools and high schools reported at least one serious crime such as rape or robbery in the 1996-1997 school year. On the other hand, more than 43 percent of all public schools reported no crimes at all. Still, if children do not feel safe at home and at school, where can they feel secure?
The rash of well-publicized shootings on school campuses in 1998 and 1999 has generated a lot of fear about the safety in the institution in which children traditionally spend most of their daytime hours. In January 1999, 27 percent of teenage boys and 19 percent of girls listed violence as the biggest issue facing their generation. In May, following the shootings in Littleton, 51
percent of the boys and 56 percent of the girls ranked it first (Goff 1999, 53).
Parents in Florida who chose to homeschool their children cited safety as the number one reason they pulled their children out of public schools (Kantrowitz and Wingert 1998, 66).
Whether justified or not, many parents perceive the world as being a more dangerous place for children than it was when they were young. One mother quoted in Newsweek’s 1999 survey article on children yearned for the lost innocence of her own childhood, “when we could play in the woods for hours by ourselves and our parents had no reason to worry.” She believes that she has to be much more protective of her own nine-year-old daughter.
“You have no choice but to tell them about things like sexual predators and kidnappers,” she said (Kantrowitz and Wingert 1999, 68).
A ten-year qualitative sociological study of preadolescent children in grades three to six in a middle-class town noted that the fear of children being unsupervised in public space was one of two reasons for the increase in organized after-school activities. The other reason was the increased number of working mothers (Adler and Adler 1998). Gavin de Becker (1999) has written a book that offers parents techniques for protecting their children from personal violence, with advice about hiring babysitters, ensuring safety at school, helping teenage girls deal with boys, guarding against pedophiles, and the many other issues that frighten parents. Even de Becker, however, notes that the threats parents worry about the most—kidnapping and molestation by strangers—are statistically very unlikely to occur.
Growing up in a society that is perceived as dangerous has significant consequences for children. As noted, many children are actually at risk from violence of various kinds. Others are so protected from the possibility of dan- ger that they are unable to explore their social worlds in ways that promote healthy development.
One could argue that young people who perpetrate violence are also vic- tims of the society in which they live, so bombarded by violent images and events that they are either traumatized or benumbed by it. However, fewer politicians and judicial authorities are accepting the argument that children cannot be held fully accountable for their violent actions. Increasingly, the justice system is treating youthful offenders as though they were adults. After the first widely publicized schoolyard killings in Arkansas in 1998, states began enacting tougher penalties for adolescent murderers. Nearly every state has lowered the age at which children can be tried as adults and expanded the categories of crimes for which children can be sentenced to
adult prisons (Fritz and Krikorian 1998). Newspaper accounts of trials of eleven- and thirteen-year-old killers make it clear that rehabilitation is no longer the prevailing intent; rather, courts are focused on protecting society from youthful offenders (Bradsher 1999; Simon 1999).
Libraries are also affected by the heightened public awareness of danger to children. Some libraries in high crime areas report that children are not allowed to visit unattended because of concerns about potential danger on the street. There is even concern that violence may move from the streets into the library. Many libraries are paying for highly visible security officers to help both staff and patrons feel safe.