Children

Franklin D. Raines 2-01-2008

Will your own humanness really ruin your children for life?

Jim Wallis 12-07-2007

Joy and I woke up yesterday morning at 5:00 a.m. to the sounds of our screaming four-year-old, Jack, who was suffering from extreme abdominal pain. We tried to console and cuddle him, but to no avail. "Don't touch me, it really hurts!" he cried, when we tried to examine or gently rub his sore tummy. This was not like him at all; he is not an overreactive kid. We had to go get him at school that day because he was vomiting and had diarrhea. He had a quiet afternoon at home and went to sleep [...]

Molly Marsh 12-01-2007

Poverty 101

Ryan Rodrick Beiler 11-21-2007

Two months ago, for the first time in my eight years living in Washington, D.C., I was mugged. Two young men rolled up in a pickup truck while I was unloading groceries from my car in the alley next to my condo building. They made me lie on the ground, held a gun to my neck as they took my money, and then locked me in the trunk of my car as they made their getaway. Fortunately I still had my cell [...]

Kathy McGinnis 11-01-2007
A list of life-shaping books for children.
Julie Polter 10-12-2007

Mamta, a winsome, wide-eyed girl of 12 moves through her daily chores in a poor household in India. Although still a child, her life has little play, and she will too soon be bearing the full responsibilities and burdens of an adult woman: Mamta was married at the age of 7. At puberty she will quit school and move to the house of her husband, who she's had no contact with since her wedding night [...]

Jim Wallis 10-03-2007

Yesterday Jim stood with a group of religious leaders to challenge President Bush's promised veto of a bill to expand health coverage for children. He told some of the story of Bush's early days in office that he told here last week, asking what happened to his "compassionate" conservatism, and asking why Bush would veto a bill with broad bipartisan support, abandoning America's children to a [...]

Jim Wallis 9-24-2007

In his Saturday radio address, The Washington Post reports that




President Bush again called Democrats "irresponsible" for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children's health insurance program. [...]

Diana Butler Bass 10-11-2006
I confess: Over the last 10 days, I did not pay much attention to the Amish school shooting. As the mother of an 8-year old girl, I find school violence stories too painful to follow.

Julie Polter 7-01-2006

The tragic cost of child marriage.

James Ferguson 3-01-2006

Rite Lite Ltd., purveyor of “quality Judaica since 1949,” is helping children get comfortable with the mystery of a creator God who destroys. How? Rite Lite offers sets of Passover Ten Plagues Finger Puppets, made with cute cartoon eyes and colorful high-quality felt, so people of faith can share with children the suffering, death, and judgment poured out on Egyptians before the Exodus. All 10 plagues are represented, including lice, locusts, and (our favorite!) boils. (Personally, we’re hoping for a Sodom and Gomorrah line next.)

Child rearing, never an easy endeavour, has become in many ways a countercultural activity.

...one moment at a time.

David Batstone 1-01-2005
Everything I need to know I learned in my parent-teacher conferences.
Jim Wallis 12-01-2004
The 7-year-old's poster said, 'Every Life is Sacred. Stop Poverty.'
Edwidge Danticat 12-01-2004

Between Haiti and the streets of Brooklyn

Rose Marie Berger, 9-01-2003

In Nairobi, 700 children walked out of school and through the streets this April, calling for an end to their country's debt burden.

Rose Marie Berger, 1-01-2003

G.I. Joe has shown boys how to exercise military might for decades, but America's recent "war on terror" has made way for a new cash crop of action figures. Since Sept.

Kelly Sterns 7-01-2002

The summer God was nine years old
Heaven's swamp cooler broke for good.
His Mama was stout yet managed to scale
the side of their trailer, parked off a path
near the woods over by Gabriel's.
She jerry-rigged its fan to flutter
with the backing off her green and purple earring.

God was building insects that day
under the shade of the grapevines by the tree.
He pinched that colorful tool,
ran off for the quiet of his overhanging vines.
Easing the earring out of his overalls
he mimicked his Mama an historic way that day.

When humanitarian intervention sends in the troops, it’s not usually a laughing matter.