When I was growing up, large families were not the rarity that they are now.  The fact that I was one of twelve children was still remarkable, but on our block, there was a family with seven children, two families with five, and several families with at least four.  At one point in the early 1970’s, on our neighborhood block, there were 58 children from infancy through high school age. 

Because our family was large, resources were stretched to their limit.  My mother was a master at feeding us all on a strict budget, mending clothes, scouring garage sales, and secreting away coins and occasional dollar bills into a cigar box throughout the year in order to buy Christmas presents for us.  My father was self-employed and supplemented his income by playing music in surrounding towns and selling produce from our gardens.  As far as I know, they never owned a brand new car and they never accepted food stamps or any other monetary assistance for which they were certainly qualified. 

It was a struggle in 1972 to get my Dad to agree that I should be enrolled in a new program called “Head Start.”  It was a free pre-school program for children of underprivileged families, operated in collaboration with the local college.  My dad was suspicious of do-gooders, social reformers and other bleeding hearts, and if I hadn’t been such a babbly handful at home, always getting into things and driving him crazy with questions, he might have held out longer.  But in the end he relented, and I happily climbed on the bus and went to Head Start.

I clearly remember getting my very own tube of toothpaste, and have a picture of myself brushing my teeth at Head Start.  For the first time in my life, I received my own birthday cake on my birthday, immunizations against polio, diphtheria and measles; a hearing test and an eye exam.  I willingly ate vegetables.  I socialized with other children my own age, learned music and letters and numbers.  I had unlimited books to accommodate my fast-developing love of reading.  I was not lost in a haze of 58 neighbor children; I was one of about 25 four-year-olds developing a love of learning and self-sufficiency.

Without Head Start, I am quite sure I would not have entered kindergarten already reading.  I might have struggled to fit in with kids from smaller families.  I knew that the families of some of the other kids in my Head Start group had serious problems, but those kids did great after being in the program.  I feel very strongly that Head Start truly lived up to its name:  I received a head start in my education and after high school earned a four year scholarship to the college where that little pre-school program had first embraced me.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Head Start, part of a massive social reform effort of the Johnson administration, was (and still often is) considered an unessential liberal folly aimed at the poor and disreputable who couldn’t be bothered to do right by their children.  I’m shocked by this, because I know that my family worked hard and the families of many of the children in my program worked just as hard as my parents did.  That’s still the case.  Sometimes pulling yourself up by the bootstraps only goes so far.

Recently enacted healthcare reform has made me consider once again that social progress will always have critics, some so passionate in their opposition that they will gainsay any argument in favor by declaring that the spirit of America’s independence dictates that if you just work hard enough and get off your lazy hind end, you won’t need assistance from the government. 

Fading from memory for them is the fact that even our public school system is a social program:  American education did not used to be public, but rather a privilege for the wealthy who could afford tutors or a private education.  Public libraries?  Rural electrification? FDIC?  Emergency response systems like calling 911?  Paved highways, state colleges, Veterans Administration hospitals?  All were a response to calls to advance America’s founding principles and ideals.  Most are now considered parts of our nation’s basic infrastructure, things we could never do without. None of them were specifically designed by the founding fathers, and none of them materialized out of thin air.   

Rather, they were the result of years, decades, even generations of sacrifice and legislation by visionaries who wanted to ensure a better future for our children and grandchildren.  I’m not naïve enough to think that the reform that was passed is perfect, or even adequate.  Nor do I believe the debate over healthcare reform will cease in my lifetime.  But I’m encouraged that it is a giant step in the right direction and hope that someday, the way I do with Head Start, my own daughter will marvel that it was ever debated at all.