Don't Build This Town
By John
Dillon, Ph.D. As printed in The Paducah Sun, Aug. 11, 2003
It's a
phrase we hear often: "in these tough economic times." Most of us
understand this American anxiety, as the White House is announcing a federal
deficit of $455 billion this year, and every U.S. state is hurting.
In spite of this, our real problem lies deeper than
the economy. It lies in the possibility of actual Hard Times.
I recently picked from my bookshelf a yellowed copy of E.L. Doctorow's first
novel, Welcome to Hard Times. It's certainly not among his
better-liked works, in part because of its grinding exploration of evil.
Welcome to Hard Times is set in the emerging U.S., and its main
protagonist is a character simply called "the Badman." And Hard Times,
we learn, is the name of a terrorized town.
Since its publication in 1960, readers have been transfixed by Doctorow's
sinister and mean-spirited Badman, who is known to murder out of whimsy.
He is indeed inscrutable in his evil, much worse than the tough characters
of Charles Dickens. (Dickens, coincidentally, wrote a novel called
Hard Times a century earlier).
But in both Doctorow's sense -- and in Dickens -- Hard Times stem from neglect.
Malevolence grows as do weeds in sandy lots. All it needs to prosper
is… nothing. Weeds are watered by indifference.
Recall the child characters of Dickens: Those homeless kids molded by the
Industrial Revolution. The hard-scrabble waifs condemned in an unforgiving
world. It all starts in childhood, really, and Hard Times happen when
children are fed ambivalence instead of attention, given cold porridge in
place of warm parenting.
And America today is full of cold porridge. Consider these facts about
child abuse and neglect:
- According to the citizens' group Prevent
Child Abuse America, 43 percent of parents reported spanking or hitting
their child within the past year, while 37 percent reported some level of
verbal abuse -- such as insulting or swearing. More than three million
mistreated children are reported to child protective services each year;
- In Kentucky, over 72,000 children
were reported abused last year. And the cases are becoming more serious:
The number of Commonwealth children who die as a result of violence is rising
significantly, according to the Cabinet for Families and Children;
- The Governor's Office of Child Abuse
and Domestic Violence Services reports that psychological abuse is also
on the increase. In general, this "mental abuse" occurs when mom or
dad reject their children; degrade or isolate them; deny them emotional
needs; or intimidate or exploit them.
Even if we subtract
the most serious cases of physical and sexual abuse, the consequences of
simple neglect are staggering. Psychologists say that traumatic
childhood experiences make these kids susceptible to an array of behavioral
disorders; the dysfunctions may be as mild as shyness, or as bold as psychopathology.
Many neglected kids never do manage to straighten their lives out as adults.
If we don't look out for our children, they certainly won't look out for
us. This is my key concern about the future, especially when one considers
the effects of increasingly pervasive child neglect in American society.
Our culture is not about to undergo sudden transformation into a more loving
habitat. I don't think the town of Mayberry from the Andy Griffith
show existed even in the 1950s -- but sometimes I do reminisce on the heartwarming
strength of Gregory Peck as Scout's father in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Or the benevolence exuded by June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver.
And the title said it all in Father Knows Best.
While the real world can't be utopia, I don't think we should work toward
dystopia -- that's the opposite. Dystopia would be a bad
future. More like a dark science fiction movie. Dickensian to
the extreme.
Our real guard against this may lie in the vigilance of every adult.
As caretakers to the future, we should be more ready to salve a child's
conscience if we suspect a case of child mistreatment, or to speak out to
parents or authorities. This is no time to say: "I don't want to be
involved." In fact, whether we like it or not, we are already involved.
On my walkway of life I have learned not to fear situations that I can do
little about, such as West Nile virus or AIDS. I can make my pitch
for economic parity for all people, but realize that I am not a policymaker.
North Korea's nuclear ambitions do not compel me, and I find that even terrorism
must be accommodated in this universe of risk.
Instead, I wonder about our children, our destiny, and whether with them
we can avoid building a town called Hard Times.