Book Nook: The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America

When renowned pediatrician and children’s advocate Dr. Irwin Redlener casually asks his young patients, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the lights invariably come on, eye contact occurs, and the child emerges from deep inside a protective shell. “Children are essentially dreamers … undaunted by adversity or reality-based barriers to success,” Dr. Redlener writes in The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America.

 

Inadequate education, barriers to health care and crushing poverty make it overwhelmingly difficult for many children to realize their dreams. Finding ways to alter these trajectories is serious, grown-up business, Dr. Redlener emphasizes, and it’s time for us to act.

 

In The Future of Us, Dr. Redlener draws upon his four decades of professional experiences to examine our nation’s health care safety nets and special programs that are designed to protect and nurture our most vulnerable kids, but that too often fail to do so.

 

It is Dr. Redlener’s hope that readers will emerge optimistic about our future, with a deeper understanding of how investing in children today will increase our chances of a successful tomorrow. Fighting for our nation’s children is far from a lost cause, and nothing could be more important.

Learn more in this interview.

1. The book discusses children that dream big, but are often unable to achieve their dreams because of reasons outside of their control. Can you talk about some of these social factors -- like poverty, lack of healthcare, and poor education – and how they shape the outcomes of America’s youngest generation?
1. Among the most heartbreaking and frustrating experiences of my career have been the many children I’ve met who are unable to fulfill their aspirations and dreams because a myriad of barriers that kept them reaching the success they desperately wanted. Profound poverty, terrible schools and avoidable health challenges are among the barriers that stand in their way. And, by the way, these children are essential to a vibrant American future. It’s in nobody’s interest to have any of our children unable to be successful in life.

2. You have had a fascinating journey throughout your career working with both disadvantaged youth across the nation, to some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry – from Michael Jackson and Cher, to Paul Simon and Marc Antony. What is the theme that has strung together the experiences you share in this book, and how have you gotten such big stars on board with these initiatives?
1. So many of these A-listers want nothing more than to help solve problems by using their fame and resources to make a difference. There is no generic formula other than finding a good match between the cause and what the individual would like to work on. And really, the rest is about serendipity; right place, right time!
   
   
   
3. This book speaks directly to the threats and adversities faced by America’s children, and especially the poor and most vulnerable youth. How is the coronavirus pandemic exacerbating these challenges and posing a grave risk their future?
1. By virtually every measure, children who lived with severe adversity prior to the pandemic, are now worse off. More children live in more poverty than any other time in recent memory. And the interruption of education and access to health care has been particularly tough on our most vulnerable kids.
   
   
   
4. You often say that “children are the bellwethers of any society.” What do you mean by that, and more importantly, if it is true, what does that imply for the state of our nation today?
1. It means that if the children in any community are doing well, it is likely that the community at large is doing well, too. This is a phenomenon we see often in large-scale disaster recovery: If children are getting back to normal with respect to education, social structure, housing and health status, that’s is a very good sign for the rest of the community in terms of recovering, as well.
   
   

 

5. This pandemic has highlighted many of the racial and social disparities that exist across U.S. society, which you address in the book. How can we do better as a society to eliminate those barriers and allow our children – and other marginalized groups – to reach their full potential?

 

1. My experience tells me that the change that’s really required will not truly happen passively or incrementally. A true, all-sector commitment is needed to end inequality, stop the school to jail pipeline and ensure that every child gets a quality education. Actually, I would like to see a “children’s Marshall Plan with bipartisan buy-in and huge public sentiment favoring a revolution in how we must secure the well-being and success of every child. And, of course, we’ll need a significant investment of the next decade or two to get ourselves on track. We must do this to secure an American future that is about leading the world in innovation, economic development and serving as a beacon of hope for the planet around opportunity, social justice and democratic values.

 

6. Can you share with us an anecdote from your book, about a child that you encountered who was prevented from reaching their full potential because of these social and economic adversities? How can we level the playing field for all U.S. children?
1. Perhaps the most heartbreaking story of a child I knew who would never reach his potential was William’s desire to become a paleontologist. This was a young boy who carried his dream in his shirt pocket in the form of an old newspaper article about a famous paleontologist. William desperately wanted to follow in that man’s footsteps. But this wonderful 10-year-old boy was very poor and homeless, living, in fact, in a foster facility – and not going to school regularly. His chances for realizing his dream was virtually nil. Leveling the playing field for kids like him? Nothing short of an all-out Marshall Plan for America’s children.

 

Author Irwin Redlener, M.D., is a pediatrician and founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, which works to understand and improve the nation's capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. In 2020, Dr. Redlener created the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia. He is a public health analyst for NBC and MSNBC, and recently partnered with Cher in CherCares, a new program that assists communities struggling with COVID-19.

 

Dr. Redlener is also President Emeritus and Co-Founder of the Children’s Health Fund, a philanthropic initiative that he created with singer/songwriter Paul Simon and Karen Redlener to develop health care programs in 25 of the nation’s most medically underserved urban and rural communities. He currently serves as a special advisor on emergency preparedness to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and regularly communicates with leadership in U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, as well as Homeland Security.

 

He is also the author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now. For more information, please visit www.irwinredlener.org.