A symbolic expression of this disaster is that when Hewlett wrote her book a year ago, 146 countries had ratified the international convention on the rights of the child, but one had not: the U.S. That’s a standard pattern for international conventions on human rights. However, just for fairness, it’s only proper to add that Reaganite conservatism is catholic in its anti-child, anti-family spirit, so the World Health Organization voted to condemn the Nestle Corporation for aggressive marketing of infant formula, which kills plenty of children. The vote was 118 to 1. I’ll leave you to guess the one. However, this is quite minor compared with what the World Health Organization calls the “silent genocide” that’s killing millions of children every year as a result of the freemarket policies for the poor and the refusal of the rich to give any aid. Again, the U.S. has one of the worst and most miserly records among the rich societies.

Another symbolic expression of this disaster is a new line of greeting cards by the Hallmark Corporation. One of them says, “Have a super day at school.” That one, they tell you, is to be put under a box of cereal in the morning, so that when the children go off to school it says, Have a super day at school. Another one says, “I wish I had more time to tuck you in.” That’s one that you stick under the pillow at night when the kid goes to sleep alone. [laughter] There are other such examples.

In part this disaster for children and families is the result simply of falling wages. State corporate policy has been designed for the last years, especially under the Reaganites and Thatcher, to enrich small sectors and to impoverish the majority, and it succeeded. It’s had exactly the intended effect. That means that people have to work much longer hours to survive. For much of the population both parents have to work maybe fifty to sixty hours merely to provide necessities. Meanwhile, incidentally, corporate profits are zooming. Fortune magazine talks about the “dazzling” profits reaching new heights for the Fortune 500 even though sales are stagnating.