by Larry Marx, CEO, The Children’s Agenda

One of the things the field of child development teaches us is that human growth thrives on predictability, support, focused attention, and feeling loved. That’s how children develop a sense of their own power and agency. But the times we live in now are almost the opposite of that. These times are challenging and stressful, internationally, domestically, locally. . . and most likely very personally, too, for many people.

That challenge and stress takes its toll, and The Children’s Agenda is not immune. Not knowing what will or won’t be in the federal budget for families’ social safety net, for Medicaid, or federal aid for low-income students in schools like Rochester’s, directly affects what we should and will be doing. Huge questions about our work exist right now in the uncertainty of not knowing if policy will keep families intact or separate them, or if intensifying cultural division and animosity will damage children’s mental health as badly as COVID did.

So, in the absence of certainty, The Children’s Agenda will choose courage. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear,” and “we must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” Given all that he and the civil rights movement faced in those perilous times – given the existential risks they took then – it’s the least that some of us can do now.

In the Grand Canyon that lies between hope and fear, we choose hope. Both fear and hope are, of course, natural human responses to the unknown. And both can motivate action.

But fear motivates fight or flight, to move away from what is threatening, while hope motivates moving toward opportunity, with intentionality and creativity. Fearful people physically tighten, shut down, and close off from the unknown. There is a sense of scarcity, a need to defend against further loss, and an acute sense of our own vulnerability. Hopeful people physically relax, open up and even embrace the unknown. We feel a sense of abundance and excitement about the possibilities in store for us.

So, at the risk of sounding out of tune with these challenging, stressful times, for right now, here’s how The Children’s Agenda plans to stay hopeful:

• The current New York state budget proposal includes a greatly expanded child tax credit, one that will singlehandedly lift thousands of families out of poverty. Let’s make it happen, and let’s make it better in the legislature.
• Chronic absences may finally be peaking at schools. Let’s accelerate that curve, and let’s give families more reasons for showing up – more engaging environments, better resourced classrooms, exciting extra-curriculars, and better meals.
• New York has established continuous health care coverage for 66,000 additional children from birth to age 6 per year under Medicaid, making it more likely they’ll receive primary and preventive care, early intervention for developmental delays and disabilities, and far less likely to be absent from school. Let’s extend New York’s continuous coverage to age 18.

We’ve got a world to win, and children are depending on us. One of the most hopeful, courageous statements ever made is “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And we know that the next generation, and generations after that, depend on our bending that arc just as much as we can right now, during these, our perilous times.