Public Policy Toward Children: Identifying the Problems

Doris Bergen Sponseller and Joel S. Fink

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1982, vol. 461, issue 1, 14-20

Abstract: This article identifies four problems with the way American society deals with children's needs: the discussion of children's problems seldom results in effective legislation or social action; child advocates are unable to achieve sufficient consensus on policy recommendations to provide direction to legislators; services needed by all children are provided only to special groups and even in these cases the help is not sustained; and much of the aid provided is directed toward adults and does not necessarily have the desired impact on children. Some possible explanations for these problems are offered: the cultural belief in parents' rights, the devaluing of children as recipients of economic investment, the cultural tendency to respond only to crises, and the political inexperience of child advocates are all identified as forces that contribute to the inadequacies in the way children's needs are met.

Date: 1982
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716282461000002 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:461:y:1982:i:1:p:14-20

DOI: 10.1177/0002716282461000002

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().