This will be my own opinion from all the experience and knowledge I have garnered during this period. I can actually speak better about children's rights from about 1954 to the present as I was 6 years old until now in 2011 when I'm 63.
First of all, incredible steps forward were achieved in children's rights in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. However, by the 1990s children's rights were exclipsed by a basic end to welfare and social services in the U.S. at least in regard to what they were from the 1950s until the early 1990s. So, in this sense the average child in the U.S. has presently "The right to poverty and no rights to good healthy food or a good education."
However, it must be noted that this is much better than in some nations "Children have the right to die or be shot by authorities if they run away from parents who beat and abuse them." which is how it actually is in most of the world. So "The right to poverty and no rights to good healthy food or a good education" is much better than the right to be killed outright like it is in most of the rest of the world.
Recently, my son and I discovered on Netflix, "Trailer Park Boys" which reminded me a lot of how people were when I grew up in the 1950s. In other words I met people growing up who were just like this from ages 6 to 12 years of age when my parents moved to a better area to live. Two of these kinds of people put a knife to my throat on different occasions and cut my throat slightly and told me they were going to cut my head of while I bled into the collar of my shirts. So, at least in the U.S. I know how bad it can get (at least how bad it can get when people don't pull guns on you and shoot you and just pull knives and slightly cut you instead.)
Though I sat through about 4 episodes of "Trailer Park Boys" I found the first two to be the funniest and then the horror of just how bad their lives are and how little hope for a future for any of them set in and I had to not watch anymore episodes because of this.
So, most of the advantages that the average child gained when the U.S. started to really become affluent as a nation in the 1950s through the 1970s, they lost by the late 1980s and early 1990s. And then the 2000s and beyond have just been a complete horror for children relatively speaking to how good they had it in the 1950s through the 1980s.
So, at present I would say children are losing rights by the day to be realistic here in the U.S.
3 comments:
you know, your posts would be a lot easier to understand if you just bothered to make it more structured. And not start every IP with "so". Furthermore, you seem to be quoting someone, if you're going to quote someone you need to QUOTE THEM.
When I have something to quote I do. However, I am sort of eccentric as most people over 40 or 50 tend to be. I love to write but hate to edit. If I have a quote that I can access or remember I always include it. On this particular article I wanted a point of view presented that most people don't see, namely a point of view not PC but that spanned 60 years of direct experience living mostly in California. I was one of those young men who supported women's liberation in the 1960s and 1970s especially even in my first marriage until I found that someone in every marriage had to be 51% and the other 49% otherwise there was never a bottom line and no decision could ever get made and it just went round and round and round in circles. So, after that I realized that most people weren't ready for what they were trying to do and that the human race will take at least 500 years to fully make sense of equal rights and it may not get figured out right even then but be an eternal work in progress. The result today I mostly see is confusion on eveyrone's part. But the good thing is that a whole lot less people get killed or go crazy from the abuse of gender or sexual preference than did before the 1960s.
And in regard to children I think it is obvious to everyone that studies the issue that children are much worse off than they were in the 1980s back to the 1950s now. So I suppose I would say that children in general are about as well taken care of in the U.S. as they were in the 1950s when I grew up. So we are going backwards in regard to education and general care of children at present.
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