Kids And Adults Pay A Price For

American Family Life Has Never Been Particularly Idyllic. In The Nineteenth Century, Nearly A Quarter Of All Children Experienced The Death Of One Of Their Parents.... Not Until The Sixties Did The Chief Cause Of Separation Of Parents Shift From Death To Divorce.

We Are Telling Our Kids That Nature Is In The Past And It Probably Doesn't Count Anymore, The Future Is In Electronics, The Boogeyman Is In The Woods, And Playing Outdoors Is Probably Illicit And Possibly Illegal.

We Have Such A Brief Opportunity To Pass On To Our Children Our Love For This Earth, And To Tell Our Stories. These Are The Moments When The World Is Made Whole. In My Children's Memories, The Adventures We've Had Together In Nature Will Always Exist.

Every Child Needs Nature. Not Just The Ones With Parents Who Appreciate Nature. Not Only Those Of A Certain Economic Class Or Culture Or Set Of Abilities. Every Child.

I Do Not Mean To Imply That The Good Old Days Were Perfect. But The Institutions And Structure--the Web--of Society Needed Reform,not Demolition. To Have Cut The Institutional And Community Strands Without Replacing Them With New Ones Proved To Be A Form Of Abuse To One Generation And To The Next. For So Many Americans, The Tragedy Was Not In Dreaming That Life Could Be Better; The Tragedy Was That The Dreaming Ended.