This Thing Called Hunger Part II: Parental Abdication

I saw something on TV that nearly made me jump out of my skin with anger—a woman asking for donations of food for a program she created to send food home with kids in special backpacks. I didn’t get her name or the name of the program.

This food wasn’t for every kid, mind you—only the “special” ones who made ample use of the school breakfast and lunch programs.

She then began the old sing-song about children going to bed hungry, going to school hungry, and how malnourishment affects their ability to learn. I agree that malnourishment affects learning ability, but she was asking for donations to programs in big cities only, and for donations of foods that can easily fit in backpacks that kids will eat on the weekends—in short, this program is NOT for the families, but the children themselves, and is filled with junk foods.

When pressed for the types of foods to be donated, she expressly mentioned gelatin cups, fruit cups, pudding cups, snack-size bags of chips, cookies, and crackers, fruit roll-up-type snacks, yogurt cups, fun-size candy bars, applesauce cups, etc.

The yogurt I could get behind, but that was all. The rest is high fructose corn syrup-laden garbage as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not contributing to the dental and health delinquency of a minor!

It’s bad enough that parents who can’t afford to have these kids in the first place abdicate their care and feeding to the public in wholesale lots: public school and Head Start breakfast and lunch programs, soup kitchens, church dinners, food banks, and now weekend food donated by other parents. This woman’s program would leave only one meal a day to be fed by parents themselves to their own children, if that.

This made me think of all the other programs in the area and how they’re easily abused by slacker parents—around here, we have an area-wide school supply drive for so-called “needy” kids, then a yearly Angel Tree to provide so-called “needy” kids a brand new Christmas present, then a community-wide Easter Egg Hunt in a large city park, and various canned food drives throughout the year. Combine these with the school feeding programs, church clothing drives, church and soup kitchen meals, food banks, WIC programs, and unnamed wealthy people donating large numbers of brand new sneakers to various “needy” children, and I began to see how it is that so-called “poor” people can actually get by quite comfortably, and with little personal effort or outlay. Needless to say, there are many children signed up for programs who don’t rightly belong there!

There's no incentive for parents to do better for themselves and their kids, especially when free stuff is being given away throughout the calendar year.

Why should I feel sorry for people who can’t (or in some cases won’t) feed their own children? Instead of providing food for these “special” backpacks, I’d like to provide boxes of condoms for the kids’ parents—but that would be politically incorrect and frowned upon as insensitive. Besides, condom use by these people would inevitably put the food bank, Angel Tree, school supply drive, and school breakfast and lunch people out of jobs.

If you think about it, you wonder just how many parents out there have abdicated the job of feeding and clothing their kids to other people, whether truly deserving or not. Exactly where are the checks and balances for programs such as these? Who is checking for income verification? Last I heard, it was “sign your kid up and get started” for most of these programs, and there wasn’t a time limit or kid limit for them. Not even guilt prevents some people from incorporating these programs as the “norm” in their lives—free stuff is free stuff, no matter where it is and how they have to get it.

Some families have been using these programs for years, and for successive children, because they know the safety net exists. This net is so sturdy, they have come to rely on it alone for feeding and outfitting the kids—and they continue to have more.

Are any of the kids actually hungry, going to bed hungry, or in a continuously hungry state? Of course not, but now we’re supposed to be concerned about what these “school food program” kids are going to eat when school’s out for weekends and the summer.

If you can't feed your kid, then it's time to give it up for adoption to someone who can. It's also time to be responsible for once and stop making more kids.

At what point do the parents step in and do the job of providing, and at what point does the rest of the general public get to say “enough is enough”?

I’m saying no to all donations, drives, and holiday volunteering, because I don’t know that who I’m giving for is in real need of my stuff and services, or just another slacker relying on his fellow man to get him by. It’s a shame that it’s come to this, but I’ve long-since grown weary of being taken advantage of—the cleverest marketing pitches don’t even get my attention any more.

So call me Ebenezer—I don’t care. Merry Christmas to some, and bah humbug to the rest (you know who you are). Nobody’s getting the fatted goose in the shop window unless they can pay for it.
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Update: On November 28, 2008, I found out what school is doing this--Lincoln Elementary in Newark, New Jersey. Yes, they're still doing it, and now they've added such hideousness as soy milk (like a kid's going to drink THAT!), organic fruit rollups, soy puddings, and veggie chips. The addition of soy to some of the backpack fare doesn't make it any more of an intelligent eating choice, especially when the kids aren't likely to eat it in the first place. Handing out soy to kids is like handing out BPA-laden products to mothers of newborns--both substances are known hormone disruptors.

To my knowledge, this program still has no official name. They also seem to be using brand-new backpacks with every weekend fill--if so, what a waste! Not reusing them week after week is a ludicrous waste.