Free to be a Kid
Parenting can be an exercise in worrying. With a 10-month-old girl and a 3-year-old boy at home, new dangers seemingly confront my children every day: baby bottles made from toxic plastic, car seat malfunctions, choking hazards, the list goes on. On another level, stories of school violence and child abuse are every parent’s nightmare.
But for all of the dangers my children may face, I take comfort in knowing they will grow up surrounded by family and friends who love and nurture them. That’s not the case for millions of children around the world who are living enslaved at this very moment, either kidnapped or sold to toil in sweatshops, rug looms, quarries, or brothels. As USF Professor David Batstone, author of Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—and How We Can Fight It, writes in this issue’s cover story on human trafficking, there are more slaves in bondage today (27 million, half of them children) than were bartered in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Batstone’s book was released this year in conjunction with the movie Amazing Grace about the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade 200 years ago. He initially envisioned it as an exposé of the people who are being bought and sold in the 21st century. He tells that story, but he also found another, more hopeful one: the tale of modern-day abolitionists fighting to end slavery once and for all, to give every child the love, support, and freedoms we too often take for granted.
So when I kiss my little ones goodnight tonight, I’ll pray that all children will be free to play, free to laugh, free to love, free to be kids.
Angie Davis
Editor, USF Magazine
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