Growing up in America: children as targets of violence

In A. S. Byatt's essay on the British poet, D. J. Enright ("A Sense of Religion: Enright's God," Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings, Turtle Bay Books, 1991), Byatt quotes from a poem in which Enright looks at a picture by the Japanese artist, Hokusai:

A child's head

Immobile, authentic, torn and bloody--

The point of repose in the picture, the point of

movement in us.

"Which says much," continues Byatt, "about the relation of art to life, and of what it is to be 'moved,' of evil.... It is as though Enright's interest in, if not need for, religion arises from the certain existence of the principle of evil, which entails the desire, if never the certainty, for the existence of theological good."

When I first read Byatt's essay last winter, I found myself recalling another winter evening, ten years ago. It was a cold December night, and very late. I had finished working; unable to sleep, I stepped outside and gazed at the stars, vibrant in the dark sky. From my balcony, I could see the glow of the night light in the adjoining room, where my small son was asleep.

This was during a period when the nightly news was filled with horror stories from Beirut, with video footage of small children who were maimed, screaming, dead. I stood on the balcony for a long time, looking at the distant stars with a mixture of wonder, apprehension, and outrage: that I and my son were safe that night and yet, under the same stars, in the same moment, there was unspeakable horror and suffering. Only by the sheer accident of birth, circumstance, and geography was my son asleep, safe, far from war.

The point of repose in the picture. I often wish I could take more comfort in that sense of safety, in the buffer zone that those of us in relatively privileged circumstances are able to construct around our children. But because this safety is accidental, I know it is illusory. My children's relative security only deepens my horror at the violence done to other children.

Historically, the violation of children has been confined to situations where the usual boundaries of morality break down: in war, for example, or in the extremities of dire poverty or mental illness. In a normal society, most children are safe; in a normal society, parents can raise their children to face the odds, to be resilient, to enter the adult world with a basic sense of trust.

My children were born in Germany. Attacks on children are still rare enough in Germany that I could be reasonably sure, when they left the house, that they were physically safe. It was more crucial to their development that they be given an increasing amount of independence than that I protect their every step.

They were ten and five when we moved to the United States. There were several points of culture shock when I returned to this country after thirteen years abroad, but none as disturbing as the realization of the violence regularly done in this society to children. During our last year in Germany, our son had started venturing downtown on the streetcar with his friends; our daughter had begun exploring the neighborhood on her bicycle.

It was a shock to all of us, when we arrived in this country, to realize that the children could not have the freedom here that they had in Germany. We live in a suburb of Washington, D.C., an area with good schools and quiet streets.

The month we moved in, a fourteen-year-old in another pleasant suburb was killed, while doing yard work, by a disturbed homeless man wandering around with a gun.

It quickly became clear to us that, despite the idyllic setting, the territory the children could safely explore on their own was far smaller than what they had become used to. It also became clear that, wherever they went, I would worry more about them--and this in itself introduced a new dynamic into our relationship.

In particular, my son was unhappy with this change. Most arguments centered on his desire to bicycle alone to the nearest "downtown," a shopping mall several miles away. The mall is not in a high-crime area; but in separate incidents last year, a fifteen-year-old girl was raped and a twelve-year-old boy robbed at gunpoint in the surrounding neighborhood.

Our ongoing argument was about when my son would be "old" enough. Finally, the discrepancy between the way things are and the way things should be hit me. "You're already old enough," I told him. "If this society were different, there would be no reason why you couldn't go on your own. But it's not safe." End of discussion.

I had the feeling that it was the end of more than that. His perception of the world as an exciting place in which to venture forth had changed. "America," he told a German friend, "is like a prison." But things are changing in Europe, too; in general, the whole world is becoming a dangerous place for children. Who among us, including children, can fail to be aware of the regularity with which children are beaten, abused, raped, and killed?

For a long time, I tried to explain this phenomenon to my children using psychological or sociological answers. (Obviously, anyone who harms a child has problems of some nature.) But I find that the usual explanations aren't sufficient anymore. In particular, the case of Susan Smith stumped me. In discussing it with my children last fall, I found myself talking not about the reason for Smith's murder of her two young sons--what possible reason could make this tragedy understandable?--but about the significance of religious faith.

I am convinced that I have to offer my children possibilities for living, not just warnings and horror stories. If children are to find joy in their lives and contribute something to the world, they cannot be afraid all the time. They will have to retain the capacity to discover and implement the good in a world that offers daily examples of the complete irrelevance of "the theological good."

Like Enright looking at Hokusai's picture of a dead child, I confront my religious belief and its apparent impotence in the face of evil. We are certain of evil, writes Byatt; we desire the good. I fear that this certainty, not our desire for the good, is the spark of movement within us. It impels us in directions that are healthy neither for us nor for our children. A society in which so many children become victims inevitably begins to see its children in a different way: not as beings created in the image of God, destined and intended for love, responsibility, and independence, but as likely victims, as possible targets of violence, as potential objects of sexual desire. Even in our efforts to protect our children, we give them the message that there is something natural about this state of affairs, that this is the way the world is, that we can only hide from evil, not stop it.

What will happen to a generation of children raised to see the world as the province of certain, random evil? Even those fortunate ones whose immediate world is intact and loving live in a society where newborn babies are found in garbage cans, children kill other children, parents kill children, and where innercity children fantasize about their funerals.

Sometimes, when my children and I talk about how to resolve conflicts in school, deal with strangers, or respond in uncertain situations, I feel that I am trying to instill in them a totally impractical mission. I want them to be safe. But I also want them to be certain of the power of good and of decency. I want this certainty--not fear, distrust, and a blind desire for survival--to be the point of movement in their lives.

I don't know if this will work. With good reason, my children are far more certain of evil at this point than of the existence of good. That is part of the horror in the Susan Smith story. But the real horror is that it is only an extreme example of what has become a commonplace event: the murder of children. A certain kind of innocence is necessary for the survival of the desire for the good. When that innocence dies in our children, something is destroyed in all of us as well.

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