ABSTRACT
Assuming globalized market effects and state policies, the redistributive functions of a civic state produce health, social cohesion and competence that contribute to economic innovation and growth. State, community, and family capital transfers underwrite health, education, and individual agency. In the civic state the child is both a moral and political subject whose voice is heard only when adults subordinate their present selves to their future selves. Betty Friedman’s wake-up call to American parents destroys their children in the very name of Americans’ national myth of themselves as innocents at home and abroad. In rich countries the life-cycle has lengthened for elders while the periodization of childhood and youth has been extended through schooling, contraception and personal autonomy. All children should be able to see in their families, schools, and communities the prospect of their own turn to adulthood and family with reasonable security for their elders.
