There is no more important contradiction in social policy than this: From child-development research we now know that the first few years of life play a crucial role in shaping a person's lifelong mental, emotional, and physical abilities. And yet it is for this stage of life that we seem to make our social investments most grudgingly and tolerate the greatest deprivation. To illustrate:

• About one in five children lives in poverty.

• More than 12 million American children—the equivalent of a medium-sized country—are now poor.

• Some 3.3 million children are now living with their teenage mothers; the proportion of out-of-wedlock births to teenagers has soared during the past twenty years.

• Child abuse and neglect are growing; more than 2 million cases are reported each year, about 900,000 of which are verified.

Although scientific knowledge about early childhood years has mushroomed, it is during these years that Americans are most likely to live in poverty. Simply put, our knowledge is not being applied.

As parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends, most of us have peered through the glass of a hospital nursery at rows of infants wrapped in blankets—so vulnerable yet so full of promise. If we could somehow look through that window to view all the nation's children, the spectacle would be alarming. In a typical recent year we would see one-quarter of a million babies born undersized (i.e., weighing 5½ pounds or less), often afflicted by illness and handicaps. Some will die. In some inner-city hospitals more than one in ten babies are born drug-addicted. Forty-two percent of the white babies will live with a single mother by age eight, and most of these infants will experience a major spell of poverty during