Julia wrote: >I'd be a lot happier today if there were no crack-addicted babies >born, for one thing.
I think I've mentioned before that my wife is a music teacher. One of the problems teachers are facing more and more these days is trying to teach kids whose mothers were on crack, alcohol, and/or other drugs during pregnancy. All of these kids get off to a slower start than children born to drug and alcohol free mothers, although some of them can get caught up depending on the level of drug use of the mother and the level of care and intervention available for the child -- and money makes a big difference in the amount of care such a child can get. There is some evidence to suggest that the environment in which the child grows up is more important that the amount of drugs done by the mother, see http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/cocaine/crackbb.htm for an extreme and somewhat overstated version of that argument. But it's hard to determine whether the drugs the mother is taking cause the bad environment or the bad environment is the cause of the drug use; it's probably a combination of those things, a viscious circle where each causes the other to get worse. The root cause of both is poverty, and we as a planet need to do much more to fight the problem of poverty than we do right now. I realize this sounds pretty strange coming from someone who leans toward Libertarianism... Reggie Bautista -- who is really all over the political spectrum, depending on the issue _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
