A national child advocacy group called "Every Child Matters," is courting Iowa moms in the fall election. Group president Michael Petit says they believe if more women vote, more politicians will address children’s issues.
Petit says they’ll contact more than 10,000 daycares and after school programs in order to try and get more moms out on election day. Petit says if you do a poll of men and women, women break more toward investments in children, especially for things like childcare, because they’re worried about who is supervising children.
Petit says children’s issues are just as important as the Iraq war, but get less attention.Petit says in the last five years we’ve lost four thousand soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he says is a terrible thing, but Petit says we’ve lost 30,000 American children to suicide, child abuse, or they’ve died on the streets.
Petit says the U.S. has many problems involving children, including high dropout rates. Petit says the prison population has increased almost eightfold in a single generation, we have "by far the highest rates of child abuse/neglect in the western democracies."
He says these are urgent issues that’re making the Unites State less competitive in the world. Petit says they are a non-partisian group and will not advocate for a specific candidate, but will urge the next president to lay out a 20-year, 500-billion dollar initiative to help kids.