c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is the author of”On a Journey,”daily meditations available through Journey Publishing Co. If you have feedback or want to suggest a question for a future column, send e-mail to: journey(AT)interpath.com)

UNDATED _ If a society can be judged by how it cares for children, then we have some grim reckoning ahead.

Children are being warehoused. Babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers are being raised in large groups, by poorly paid strangers, in colorful but sterile facilities where they learn to follow rules and get along without laps and kisses.

At age five, children enter the pandemonium of public schools, where frustrated (and poorly paid) teachers reward compliance and plod through curricula chosen by politicians, where testing matters more than tutoring, where down-time is spent watching television, rather than reading, and children move obediently through a 10-hour day.

Hovering outside the playground are the predators: tobacco companies hawking addiction, cosmetic and clothing companies exploiting teenagers’ insecurity, record companies luring unwary children into”clubs,”and Internet sites promising fun in exchange for addresses and credit card numbers.

And those are just the legal predators. Add the drug dealers, alcohol sellers and sex merchants, whom our government rarely finds the energy to pursue.

Children’s play time is structured into activities suiting parents’ schedules and kids who would rather just toss a ball around end up in shiny uniforms performing for parents.

How did we get this way? Not happily, it seems to me. Few parents want to hand babies over to day-care centers. Single-parenting wasn’t the plan on wedding day. Teenagers don’t chase sexual adventure in order to produce babies. I never hear parents say,”Gosh, we love working non-stop and seeing our kids only on weekends.” There’s no specific”bad guy”in this drama. Just us. We have backed into this frightening social experiment, partly out of what we consider economic necessity, and we feel guilty about it.

But the questions remain: can a society survive when its children don’t acquire basic academic skills or love of learning, and nurturing is sporadic?

What happens when we view children as a market, not a treasure, and parents spend long hours designing products for children, rather than caring for children? What happens when children no longer gaze dreamily at clouds but spend their few minutes of free time wondering what product to buy next?

We rush to blame the schools. After blaming, we load onto public education even more layers of expectations, in the mistaken belief schools can compensate for absent or distracted parents.

We try to buy healthy childhoods for our children. We move to expensive neighborhoods requiring two incomes to afford; we support glossy clubs and YMCAs; we give our children free rein in Toys ‘R Us; we buy designer clothes for kids who would rather roll in mud.

I think of Little League Baseball. Playing for the Wasps occupied two nights a week in one happy summer of my childhood. When I became a dad, I thought Little League might help my sons enjoy their lives. What I forgot was that I hated the games _ way too much pressure _ and the summer was happy because we played in the street, shagged flies when no parents were watching, sat under trees, played canasta in the afternoon, and had lemonade stands.

I will never forget a survey of children I helped to sponsor. Drugs and alcohol were sweeping our quaint suburban town. We were mystified. Our kids seemed to have everything. So we asked them. Their answer:”If we could have anything in the world, we would take more time with our dads. In the absence of that, we will take Mopeds.” I think ugliness has always been a part of childhood. More children than we realize grow up in homes where alcoholism, physical abuse and incest make life a nightmare. When grownups get honest about their lives, they often tell painful stories from childhood.

I think we know those are anomalies, mistakes, not the way life was meant to be. We know children shouldn’t be abused. But do we realize they shouldn’t be ignored, as if childhood were a garden that blossoms no matter what kind of tending and nourishment it receives?

DEA END EHRICH