We should also use public health agencies like WIC, pre-natal care clinics, and visiting nurses to reach out to mothers in need to help them gain the knowledge they need to raise healthy children. We need to teach parents how to parent. And we need to help all children in the pre-school years. Although ambitious efforts such as Head Start, Even Start and CHIPs exist, we need to address the gaps in education and health care that fail to reach children's needs. Although welfare itself was not a central focus of the panel's work, Dr. Steinberg stated clearly that poverty is the number one cause of negative parenting.
Economic stress raises all other risk factors.
In these times of economic prosperity, we too easily forget that social problems like youth violence are exacerbated dramatically during times of economic hardship. We should use this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to a national economic policy of providing every family in America the opportunity to succeed economically through hard work. The latchkey factor is not necessarily indicative of a child with a propensity toward violence. Rather, negative parenting is the biggest factor. Parental engagement is the single most important factor in a child's healthy development.