Our Kids, by Robert Putnam

The title of this 2015 book didn't really hit me until the last sentence.

Putnam, a widely read Harvard University professor, does a wonderful job of laying out how children from lower-income families have a more difficult path to socio-economic mobility than I did. Two generations ago children from different social classes were much more likely to live next to, go to school with, and marry each other than they are now. The extra-curricular activities that used to be free are now likely to cost money. Income is now a much stronger predictor of who goes to college than test scores are, and children from impoverished families are much less likely to go to church or otherwise have caring adults in their lives than they were in 1970. Many of them have no idea of how to get to college or pursue a career.

Putnam points out that this is a problem that cuts across racial or ethnic divisions. Moving out of poverty is unlikely for white, Latino, and black children. In fact immigrant children often have stronger social structures than native-born citizens do.

There are some policy recommendations in the last chapter that seem sound but, in this polarized political moment, remote. But Putnam reminds us that most of us can do at least a little bit to help at least one of the millions of children who are struggling by being a mentor or, I would add, being a dependable classroom volunteer or otherwise present in the life of a child outside your social circle.

There is so much judgement around children who are struggling. We too readily complain about other people and their children. Yet many struggling parents are working very hard and deserve as well as need our help. In any event, the children certainly do, and shouldn't that be enough? As Putnam points out in that last sentence: "They are our kids."

I have a friend who is mentoring more than one hundred low-income youth, and he has an extremely demanding job plus several children of his own. Imagine what sort of world we would live in if each of us committed to be there for just one child we don't now know, if "those kids" we complain about became "our kids" that we care for.