OH, GROW UP!

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But we no longer seem to have what it takes for this definingly human task. Bill Clinton has signed a welfare "reform" bill that will, by his own Administration's estimate, plunge a million more children into poverty. Most Americans may be fine parents individually, but we routinely countenance spending cuts for the 25% of American children who are in poverty and hence "at risk"--with the result, according to Mike Males' recent book, The Scapegoat Generation, that the U.S. now harbors both the wealthiest adults and the poorest children of any Western nation.

What makes this combination particularly shameful is that money can buy so much of the pleasure and freedom that ordinarily belong to the young. Poor children living in scary neighborhoods have to grow up fast. But affluent grownups can prolong their own childhoods through years of higher education and sheltered internships. They can spend money on therapies that explore the "inner child." They get to play too, well into the Centrum Silver years, at the kind of outdoor sports any kid would love. All of which is fine, except when these charming traits are combined with indifference toward the condition of actual children.

Of course, the more we convince ourselves that errant children are subhuman predators, the easier it gets to deny all children in poverty the resources and nurture they need. If they're the predators, we must be the vulnerable prey--the only real innocents around. And this probably explains why we can blithely identify with the man-boy in the frosted-cereal commercial while demanding that child criminals be punished like actual men. What could be better than being a great big kid, free of both the responsibilities of adulthood and the disabilities of youth, while the real kids are locked up in prison?

The grownups, in other words, are trying to keep childhood for themselves.