by Professor Barbara Bennett Woodhouse     

 

   My perspective on the pandemic is shaped by the decade I spent researching and writing about the cultural, social and economic ecology of childhood.  My book The Ecology of Childhood: How Our Changing World Threatens Children’s Rights (NYU Press 2020) examined the experiences of children and families in U.S. and Italy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. It exposed how differently each country responded to crisis. Italy ranks far below the U.S. in GDP, yet Italy’s children benefitted from a strong network of extended family and community, a European style social welfare system, and a deeply rooted sense of civic responsibility for children. These factors and the support they provided served to cushion Italian children from the worst effects of the crisis.  Children in the U.S. were not so lucky. Vulnerable American children, although living in the richest country in the world, experienced higher rates of food insufficiency, poorer health outcomes and greater dislocation than their Italian counterparts. 

 

   My book came out about two weeks before Covid-19 exploded, changing our world forever. I had not explicitly predicted a global pandemic. But I did warn of a gathering threat to children posed by forces associated with rapid globalization. These forces included unrestrained capitalism, technological revolution, rising inequality, mass migration, racial and ethnic conflict, and the existential threat of climate change.  In comparison to children in other rich nations, I realized that U.S. children were especially vulnerable to changes wrought by these forces. Our romance with rugged individualism and our entrenched racism have tended to marginalize and stigmatize vulnerability.  Rather than building the responsive state necessary to fostering resiliency in a changing world, the U.S. has privatized responsibility for the meeting of basic human needs, including those of our nation’s children. While Wall Street rebounded from recession and stock markets soared, vulnerable American families and children fell further behind. The Trump administration squandered the opportunity to rebuild, spending instead on tax cuts for the rich and leaving the ordinary family even more exposed.

 

   My book identified many of the systemic flaws that would allow Covid-19 to travel so swiftly to the U.S. and spread coast to coast with such devastating effect.  These flaws were there for all to see. But few observers anticipated back in March that Italy would come through the pandemic so well while the U.S. would fail so miserably. During the Great Recession it had been commonplace to label the Portuguese, Italians, Greeks and Spanish as Europe’s PIGS (an allusion to the pigs of the fairy tale who foolishly built their houses with straw and sticks). These Mediterranean nations were criticized by supply side economists for investing in social goods like universal health care, daycare and education, and for being too family oriented and too soft on workers, instead of allowing the magic of deregulation and global competition to lift all boats.  Yet I could see, examining the comparative statistics, that unrestrained capitalism was leaving too many Americans behind, especially in communities of color and rural communities.  In comparison to our peer nations, the U.S. ranks near the top in rates of childhood poverty, maternal mortality, incarceration, homelessness, violence and social and racial inequality. 

 

   Predictably, when the pandemic struck the U.S., instead of being met with an evidence-based national policy it was met with anti-science denialism.  Observers now believe that this pandemic is the worst national crisis since the Great Depression, and may even surpass it. Children, although innocent of blame, have suffered enormous collateral damage.  While the rates of severe illness and death are highest among the elderly, racial minorities and the medically vulnerable, all across America children’s lives have been turned upside down. Effects of trauma and dislocation are magnified in childhood. Too many children witnessed the deaths of parents and grandparents. All have lost ground in their educations. With schools closed and parents out of work, rates of food insecurity were double those experienced at the height of the Great Recession. Even children’s play has changed. My 9-year-old granddaughter who was quarantined for at home for almost two months, is finally able to play with friends on their block—masked, and socially distanced. These children have invented a new game called “infection” which involves screaming when approached, running from each other in fear and pretending to drop dead. 

 

   The pandemic has exposed the truth about American exceptionalism. We were tested and we failed.  Italians paid a huge price in personal autonomy but they flattened the curve and their economy is reopening. Italy’s leaders rose to the challenge and so did the Italian people. They listened to the epidemiologists and accepted draconian restrictions on personal freedom, including massive shutdowns, mandatory masks and strict curfews, for the collective good. Millions were tested for coronavirus in record time. Italians maintained their shutdown until the rates of community infection were almost zero. Italian school children were not conscripted as shock troops to revive the Italian economy. Children are going back to school now that it is safe to do so. Instead of simply exhorting schools to open, like our president and many of our governors, the national government in Rome is devoting major new funding to refitting and building schools to make them safe in a post-Covid world. As Italian schools prepare to open in September, one of the biggest challenges is replacing traditional multi-student desks with desks designed for a single child. To avoid competition for a scarce resource, the national government issued an urgent RFP for 2.5 million new desks and stands ready to call out the army if necessary to distribute and install them, so kids can go back to school.

 

   For me, AY 2020-21 marks the beginning of the end of a lifetime of teaching. I have been teaching for over 50 years counting my time as a nursery school-teacher. At 75 and immunocompromised, I am especially vulnerable to Covid-19. As I have watched my colleagues rising to the challenge, learning new ways to teach and mastering new technologies like Zoom, I realized it was time for me to step back. The post Covid-19 world will be different and it is up young people to make these choices. It has been a very sad time, but I am encouraged by certain changes—Black Lives Matter, the Dreamers, Parkland survivors, and the kids fighting to stem climate change in Juliana v. U.S.—all these initiatives were spearheaded by young people seeking to reimagine the American dream. There is also renewed respect for healthcare workers, day care and public-school teachers and the staffs that support these institutions. I hope our future will be marked by a growing sense of social solidarity, a growing commitment to racial and economic equality, and to insuring a better world for all of our children. I am looking forward, after the pandemic passes, to more time with my grandchildren. After all, “A world fit for children is a world fit for everyone” including old folks like me.