Thank you to Shawn Yardley and Stephanie Watson-Todd for their Maine Voices column that clearly outlined where we’re failing Maine’s children and families. (“We have an opportunity right now to make families stronger,” March 12). It’s simple: We either provide the kinds of supports that families with young children need now, or we pay for many of those children in other ways throughout their lives, whether through the criminal justice or healthcare or education systems.

Children who are traumatized by living in a dysfunctional family situation are changed physiologically by that experience, and not in a good way (“The Deepest Well,” Nadine Burke Harris, MD). It sets them up for a lifetime of struggle.

According to Maine Equal Justice, 35,000 Maine children (14 percent) grow up in households with an average income of less than $12,000 per year. That includes one in six children under the age of 6. More than 40 percent of the children from Maine’s Indigenous communities and more than 53 percent of Maine’s black or African American children live in poverty.

If altruism doesn’t influence you, perhaps enlightened self-interest will. Maine won’t thrive if her families don’t thrive. To believe otherwise is wishful thinking.

As we look at an unprecedented surplus of revenue, shouldn’t we use this opportunity to make substantive changes to ensure that every child in Maine gets the best possible start in life?

Beth Schultz
Westbrook