‘Crack baby’ myth offers pandemic-related lesson

Like crack cocaine, COVID-19 can be easily politicized.

The deeply troubled lives of “crack babies” thankfully never came to pass.

When crack cocaine first swept through American cities, much concern and social anxiety arose about the long-term impact if women used the drug while pregnant.

A widespread belief was that children would be born hyperaggressive, would fail in school, fracture already struggling families and be challenged with any number of mental health conditions.

Crack dealers in the ’80s and ’90s preyed on poor Black communities, a fact that only ratcheted up the chastising, fear-mongering tones. The war-on-drugs mentality was a factor too, always ready to lean toward moral preaching and blaming rather than seeking how to help mothers with addiction.

Forty years later, no one talks about “crack babies” for one reason: They don’t exist.

Longitudinal surveys found the impact of a mother’s usage was slight on the child. Low birth weights and a few points’ lower I.Q. scores were tracked in some of the children.

But other factors such as poverty, the stress of living in violent neighborhoods and, yes, poor parenting, accounted for many of the issues faced by the children studied.

The measurable differences overall weren’t large, according to the Maternal Lifestyle Study, a large federally financed program based at Brown University.

The “crack baby” episode in American public health is instructive for today.

The nation will likely soon face vaccine opportunities for young children, and schools continue to manage hybrid and masked learning for another year. The long-term impacts on children are a valid concern.

But like crack cocaine, COVID-19 has and continues to be easily politicized.

People have already been willing to push political points about masking and social distancing as it relates to children in school. Virtually all major cities have a viral Facebook video of a school board meeting where a parent has pounded about the horrific impact masking or online learning has had on children.

There is indisputable evidence that the pandemic and all that it has brought have affected children’s learning and, for some, their social development. How could it not?

But are children permanently behind and set up for failure in life? Is it impossible to even consider that what research is finding to be a two- to threemonth gap for some in learning assessments can’t be reclaimed?

The reply should be to monitor children’s development even closer, especially lower-income families, where the greatest slips in education attainment have been tracked.

And attention to young people’s mental health should never be discounted. One recent study published by the Journal of Pediatrics found that at least 140,000 children under 18 have had a parent or other caregiver die of COVID-19 or a pandemic-related issue.

Vaccine fears and hesitancies of parents will have to be respected and met with science-based facts.

We need fewer politically driven arguments, less labeling of good and bad parents and attention to pushing back against wild assumptions of permanent educational losses.

Most of all, we don’t need another sorry chapter in hyperventilated, stretched predictions meant to scare families, not help them.