Unemployment--and Crimes Committed Against Our Children

Last week, the Labor Department reported that 11.1 million Americans are unemployed, 50 percent more than a year ago.

You might not expect this government statistic to be reported by Psychology Today, but it's vitally important to fathers, mothers, and to our children's futures.

The New York Times, to take a convenient example, thoroughly mined the Labor Department figures in its front-page story. If one includes part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, the unemployment rate in December was 13.5 percent-almost one in seven workers. Every industry except health care and education cut its employee payrolls. [Interesting aside: The two exceptions, health care and education, represent two parts of the economy that directly affect our children.]

The Times continues with tables of figures explicating the figures, but it ignores the one, crucial point of interest to those of us who care about families: Every lost job, every discouraged worker unable to find a job, and every part-timer desperate for full-time work potentially represents a family about to sink into poverty.

The devastating consequences of poverty on children have been well documented. Poor children are more likely to drop out of school, get involved in crime, abuse drugs or alcohol, and wind up in jail.

And new reports appear all the time. Just last month, Robert Knight of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues reported that the brains of poor 9- and 10-year olds resembled the brains of stroke survivors. Electrophysiological testing of the poor kids, and comparisons to wealthier children, revealed that poor kids had attention deficits similar to those of patients with prefrontal cortex brain damage.

While the Times analyzes the retail industry, and nonfarm goods and services, we might take a closer look at families when considering the faltering economy.

I think of it this way: Every lost job could represent a family about to tumble into poverty. Every lost job has a potentially crippling effect on the futures of our children.

The greedy Wall Street financiers and criminal real-estate brokers and lenders who created this crisis bear the responsibility for the lives of these children. So do the corrupt government regulators who were supposed to stop them.

Bernie Madoff's $50-billion swindle is nothing compared to the crimes committed against our children.