America: a very dangerous place to be a child

What does it say about a nation that abuses its children?

America has a long, sad history of abusing it’s most helpless and defenseless citizens. In the early 1900’s for example, when America was rapidly moving away from being primarily a farm economy to the age of industrialization, it quickly became apparent that there was a shortage of available industrial manpower.

So eager was this new industrial manufacturing economy for workers, that very soon the nation’s children began supplying a lot of the labor necessary to drive the engines of progress. With virtually no child labor laws to protect them, these children worked long hours in very dangerous occupations.

Children could be found working in coal mines, textile mills, tobacco farms, even selling newspapers on the streets. Deprived of sleep and proper nutrition, many children were pulled into machinery and mutilated, all in the name of ‘progress’.

Children working in a Georgia textile mill. Photographed by Lewis Hine (Library of Congress)

It wasn’t until 1938 that The Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law that would prohibit most employment of minors, was passed. Even then many employers were reluctant to give up this lucrative source of cheap labor, often hiding from regulators any incriminating documentation.

The “breaker boys” at a Pennsylvania coal mine, photographed by Lewis Hine in 1911. (Library of Congress)

Thankfully, for the most part, those days are gone and have been relegated to a place in the history of our nation. Children today benefit from the many labor laws that have been enacted to protect them, for which we should all be grateful.

Tragically, however, our children are now being subjected to many new kinds of abuse.

According to the web site love our children usa, each year, upwards of over 3 million children are reported as victims of physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, and death – and those are only the ones that are reported!

Incredibly, violence and neglect against children is reported nearly every 10 seconds. And because so many cases of child violence and neglect are never reported to the authorities, some estimates put the actual number of abused children at 3 times greater than what is actually reported.

If you’re counting along with me, that’s 9 million children a year!

What does it say about a nation that abuses its children?

Well, I know what God’s Word says about children, and it is a far cry from the exploitation and abuse being heaped upon them in this generation.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.    Psalm 127:3

As unbelievable as it may be, there is still one more aspect of child abuse that must be considered. In spite of the child labor laws that were enacted to protect our youngest workers, there is still a class of citizens who have no laws to protect them.

On the contrary, we actually enacted laws to destroy them. Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, over 60 million children,the most defenseless of all, have been destroyed while in their mothers womb.

“The fruit of the womb is a reward”?

One could make the case for the womb being the most dangerous place for a child to be in today’s America.

Ron