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Tuesday 25th of August 2026

1950s Childhood responsibilities in the '50s consisted largely of drawing Pilgrims. Fran Lebowitz, Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
2016 Presidential election People have talked about a miracle. I'm hearing about a nightmare. It's hard to be a parent tonight for a lot of us. You tell your kids don't be a bully. You tell your kids don't be a bigot. You tell your kids do your homework and be prepared. And then you have this outcome and you have people putting children to bed tonight and they're afraid of breakfast. They're afraid of, “How do I explain this to my children?” Van Jones, election night, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Aging This is America, where we abandon our elderly to nursing homes because just leaving them in the forest is illegal. … We treat old people like children, and children like sages. Bill Maher,  Real Time with Bill Maher, June 21, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Alabama Republicans say  The age of consent is fourteen, period. Or whichever comes first. © 2017 Kwiple.com
American Dream  Hoping my kids have a better life than me © 2018 Kwiple.com
American Dream  Hoping my kids will understand © 2018 Kwiple.com
American Dream Not being a burden on the children © 2018 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful. The AI tutor will be by each child’s side every step of their development, helping them maximize their potential with the machine version of infinite love. … Rather than making the world harsher and  more mechanistic, infinitely patient and sympa-  thetic AI will make the world warmer and nicer. … The development and proliferation of AI — far from a risk that we should fear — is a moral obligation that we have to ourselves, to our children, and to our future. Marc Andreesssen on "our new era of AI" © 2023 Kwiple.com
Big Brother Parental control © 2016 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say But the DACA situation is a very very, it's a very difficult thing for me because you know, I love these kids. Donald Trump, referring to the Dreamers © 2018 Kwiple.com
By the numbers According to a report from the Pew Research Center, children born to 90th-percentile earners are on track to make three times as much as those born to 10th-percentile paupers. The Guardian, May 26, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Factor by which the number of children born with drug dependencies has increased in the rural U.S. population since 2004: 6 Harper's Index, March 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers In 2013, between the wee hours of Nov. 23 and the wee hours of Nov. 24, 10 American children and teenagers were killed by guns. … The number of fatalities that day exceeded the national daily average of 6.75. New York Times, October 28, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Number of U.S. states in which it is legal to sentence a minor to life in prison without parole: 31 Harper's Index, December 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Number of U.S. states in which wrongfully convicted state prisoners aren't entitled to monetary compensation: 18 Number of U.S. states in which parents can be billed for the cost of their child's incarceration: 47 Harper's Index, June 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The United States scores depressingly low compared with other advanced countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. A baby girl born in the United States today is expected to live four fewer years than one born in Italy or South Korea. One in five American children lives in a poor home. In Norway, fewer than one in 20 do. For every 100,000 American children, 33 die before they turn 20. That's 12 more than in Britain. Eduardo Porter, New York Times, October 11. 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Value of food stamps used at U.S. military commissaries last year: $66,978,704 Chances a child in school on a U.S. military base is eligible for free or reduced-cost meals: 2 in 5 Harper's Index, July 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Child support I've got a kid in Africa that I feed, that I clothe, that I school, that I inoculate for 75 cents a day. Which is practically nothing compared to what it cost to send him there. Anthony Jeselnik © 2015 Kwiple.com
Children Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying. Fran Lebowitz, “Parental Guidance”  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Children Children do not like ghettos. It takes them nearly no time to discover exactly why they are there. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Children  In America full-time child care costs 85% of the median rent. The Economist, October 5, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Children Is our children learning? George W. Bush © 2023 Kwiple.com
Children Middle-class parents are consumed by the pressure to acquire parenting expertise. They spend literally billions of dollars on parenting advice and equipment. But at the same time, the social institutions of the United States, the great originator and epicenter of parenting, provide less support to children than those in any other developed country. The United States, where all those parenting books are sold, also has the highest rates of infant mortality and child poverty in the in the developed world. Alison Gopnik, The Gardener and the Carpenter © 2016 Kwiple.com
Children The most adult conversations I have are with the childless. They read more, attend more, travel more and (through lack of mental distraction, I stress, not higher intellect) notice more. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, December 4, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Children Poor kids who do everything right don't do better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. Washington Post, October 18, 2014 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Children Statistically, kids are safer from mass shootings in a meatpacking plant than in a school. Maybe they'll lose a limb, but hey, they'll probably survive. … Best of all, they're cheap  and their brains haven't developed enough to form unions! Arguments advanced by a lobbyist for water-downed child labor laws like those being passed in many Republican-led states, as represented in an April 26, 2023, cartoon by Jen Sorensen © 2023 Kwiple.com
Children Statistically, my children have a very bad shot. Children of successful people are generally very, very troubled, not successful. Donald Trump © 2016 Kwiple.com
Children To target these young people is wrong – because they have done no wrong. It is self-defeating – because they want to start new businesses, staff or labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel. … Kicking them out won't lower the unemployment rate, or lighten anyone's taxes. or raise anyone's wages. Barack Obama, on Trump ending the 'Dreamers' program offering legal protections to uncdoumented immigrants who were illegally brought here by their parents when they were children © 2017 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say What if he's a loser? Donald Trump, responding to Ivana Trump, his first wife, who she said whe wanted to name her first born child after his father  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can't. If we had a Wall, they wouldn't even try! Donald Trump, 10:30 AM - 29 Dec 2018 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say If we can teach young people not to take drugs … it's really, really easy not to take them.  Donald Trump, on his prescription for eliminating the nation's opioid addiction epidemic — an anti-drug ad campaign targeted at kids © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid at Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you're looking at is abuse. It's child abuse. Tucker Carlson © 2021 Kwiple.com
Drugs Kids, don't do heroin. It's a gateway to being Republican. Bill Maher © 2017 Kwiple.com
Education To invest in all your children, you cannot have so many. Robin Harding, Financial Times, August 24, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Ethics If it is within our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. An application of this principle would be as follows: if I am walking pass a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence and Morality” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Liars say The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child. Donald Trump © 2024 Kwiple.com
Families American working-class families experience a level of instability unseen elsewhere in the world. Consider, for instance, mom's revolving door of father figures. No other country experiences anything like this. In France, the percentage of children exposed to three or more maternal partners is 0.5 percent—about one in two hundred. The second highest share is 2.6 percent, in Sweden, or about one in forty. In the United States, the figure is a shocking 8.2 percent — about one in twelve — and the figure is even higher in the working class. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Fashion I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?  Message on the back of the jacket worn by Melania Trump on fligthts between Washington, DC and McAllen, Texas, where she visited a detention facility for migrant children separated from their parents © 2018 Kwiple.com
Global warming Maybe you are simply not mature enough to tell it like it is, because even that burden you leave to us children. We become the bad guys who have to tell people these uncomfortable things, because no one else wants to, or dares to. Greta Thunberg, to the French parliament © 2019 Kwiple.com
Government Wise rulers know that the best way to defeat opposition is to win over its leaders; England was slow to learn that, in an industrial society, this means appropriating and educating the able children of the lower classes when they are still young. But eventually the rulers did learn; in a competitive world they had to. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Gun lobbyists say Love your guns more than their children © 2018 Kwiple.com
Guns If a child can't open a bottle of aspirin, we should also make sure she can't pull the trigger of a gun. Barack Obama © 2016 Kwiple.com
Inheritance Well, I think that she's got a lot of Marla. She's a really beautiful baby. She's got Marla's legs. We don't know whether or not she's got this part [gesturing to signify large breasts] yet, but time will tell. Donald Trump, responding to a question from Robin Leach, host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, about which attributes Tiffany, his then-1-year-old daughter, inherited from him and his wife  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary children (chil'drən), n. The fliers that coach seats on airplanes were designed to hold comfortably. © 2018 Kwiple.com
Lies If I ever thought of these as lies, I soon came to see them as part of the etiquette of poverty — a means of getting by for the poor and also a gift we give to the rich, a practice that lets us avoid talking about the uncomfortable differences between us. Over time, it becomes second nature. Observing this etiquette doesn't feel dishonest because its falsehoods recognize the deeper truth that many of society's institutions are hostile to the poor. Lying to the landlord keeps a roof over our heads. Lying to the social worker keeps our family together. Lying to ourselves allows us to believe it's all going to be OK, somehow, someday. Joshua Hunt, New York Times, July 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Longevity Over eight years, I conducted an ethnographic study examining the lives of children growing up in Kensington, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Babies born in the neighborhood are expected to live to 71, which is 17 years less than babies born no more than four miles away in the affluent, predominantly white neighborhood of Society Hill — and a life span on par with countries such as Egypt, Bhutan and Uzbekistan. Nikhail Goyal, New York Times, September 25, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Selling bulletproof backpacks for schoolkids © 2019 Kwiple.com
Poverty [T]he single best predictor of going broke in America was [found by analyzing data] to be a woman with a child. Not a woman alone. Not a couple with no kids. Not elderly or African American or Latina. One kid. Two kids. It didn't matter. The strongest  predictor was to be a woman with at least one child. Elizabeth Warren, Persist  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Privacy Anne Longfield, England's children's commissioner, has calculated that by the time the average child is 18, 70,000 posts about them will have appeared online, starting with ultrasound pictures from the womb. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, January 24, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say I'm your son, Mike. Michael Reagan responding when Ronald Reagan said “My name is Ronald Reagan. What's yours?” to a boy at a boarding school in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1964 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Only when Christ comes again. Billy Graham, response when asked, after King's "I Have a Dream" speech, when he thought “little white children … will walk hand in hand with little Black children” © 2023 Kwiple.com
Reading According to a  2022 Department of Education assessment, 67 percent of American fourth graders are not proficient readers. “The problem is even worse when you look beyond the average and focus on specific groups of children,” [Emily] Hanford  [creator of the “Sold a Story” podcast] says. “The most alarming statistic: 82 percent of Black fourth graders are not proficient readers.” Some of these children will never get the help they need. ProPublica recently reported that one fifth of adults in the United States struggle with reading — a “silent literacy crisis.” Christine Smallwood, New York Review of Books, February 9, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Republicans say DACA rhymes with caca © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Eliminating funding for the Childen's Health Insurance Program is change we believe in. After all, why should we pay for their kids' healthcare? © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Make America 8 Again Slogan on posters, caps, t-shirts, etc. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Schools  Unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together. Thurgood Marhall, dissent in Milliken v. Bradley © 2022 Kwiple.com
Selfie I was a cynical little turd at a cynical little school. Jeb Bush, on Phillips Academy Andover, 1967-1971 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Selfie I didn't take seriously how troubled she was. When she was six, she called Camarillo State Psychiatric Hospital and asked what to do if you think you're going crazy. That should have triggered something in me other than amusement. Joan Didion on the death of her adopted daughter © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie My parents gave us a fantastic sense of security and worth. By the time the bigots got around to telling us that were nobody, we already knew we were somebody. Florynce Kennedy © 2015 Kwiple.com
Selfie What took me from the kitchen to Congress was knowing that one in five children in America lives in poverty. I just can't stand that. Nancy Pelosi, who first ran for Congress at the age of 47 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Selfie They always say preachers' kids and politicians' kids are the worst. So I figured I didn't have a chance in the world to turn out OK. Sarah Huckabee Sanders © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie I'm not a baby. Donald Trump © 2020 Kwiple.com
Selfie I want five children, like in my own family, because with five, then I will know that one will be guaranteed to turn out like me. Donald Trump © 2024 Kwiple.com
Snapshot He's everything you never wanted your kids to be Donald Trump portrayed by Rudyard Kwipler © 2018 Kwiple.com
Snapshot I'm the mother of five, grandmother of nine. I know a temper tantrum when I see one. Donald Trump portrayed by Nancy Pelosi after he walked out of a meeting with her © 2019 Kwiple.com
Snapshot He has told me he can't be sexually attracted to a woman who has had children. Donald Trump portrayed by Ivana Trump, with whom he had three children before replacing her with Marla Maples © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Kids lie without any real strategy. That's why Trump seems so much like a toddler sometimes. His tendency to lie, when it's clearly a lie, is something small children do. They also bully and take toys from each other. It's something you're supposed to grow out of by the time you're 70. Donald Trump portrayed by Olivia Wilde © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Affluent places are now pulling away from poorer ones … This geographical divergence has dramatic consequences. A child born in the bottom 20% in wealthy San Francisco has twice much chance as a similar child in Detroit of ending up in the top 20% as an adult. Boys born in London's Chelsea can expect to live nearly nine years longer than those born in Blackpool. Opportunities are limited for those stuck in the wrong place. The Economist, October 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Immigrants are good at doing something difficult: leaving behind relatives, friends and the familiarity of home in search of prosperity. The economists found that native-born Americans who do what immigrants do — move toward opportunity — have children who are just as upwardly mobile as the children of immigrants. Peter Coy, New York Times, July 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union Envoys in Washington compare the Trump children to princes and princesses in a royal court. That is a bit unfair to princes: such modern examples as William and Harry in Britain talk of duty, of humility, and of shunning politics precisely because they are unelected. The Economist, July 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union c White parents don't have to have “the talk” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Dare to let the children plan your vacation — — — — — When Marcos asked to visit Fiji after seeing ads for an underwater hotel there, his parents said no because the family had traveled to the South Pacific last year. They gave Marcos and Maya a say in planning a trip to Indonesia this summer, however. citation headline and excerpt, Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest NASA Denies That It's Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars — — — — — — — — — — — On Thursday, Alex Jones welcomed a guest to talk about how kidnapped children have been sent on a two-decade mission to space. NASA now denies the interplanetary conspiracy. headline, Daily Beast, June 29, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying, “Let them eat munitions,” Trump administration officials defend increasing military spending by $50+bn by eliminating or severely reducing anti-poverty programs, including programs providing after-school food aid to low-income kids and Meals on Wheels for seniors An alternative fact [White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good” and reducing anti-poverty programs is “one of the most compassionate things we can do” because they are an onerous burden on taxpayers] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Television Most people look at Sesame Street and they see a show that educates children. Trump sees a show where a landlord is being forced to rent to black people. Bill Maher, March 17, 2017 on Trump's proposal to defund PBS © 2017 Kwiple.com
Trumpism No one in the Trump administration was likely to ever come right out and say: “We want to let kids and old people go hungry.” But, obviously, they might run the program so ineptly that it lost its political support. And then kids and old people would go hungry. Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say The children were eager to learn and were kind and in good spirits. Melania Trump, in a statement written for her by White House staffers and released on her return from an unannounced visit to a McAllen, Texas, detention center for unaccompanied minors from Central America © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Embryos, to me, are babies. Nikki Haley © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I'm not going to go open a court case saying this: [Hillary] Clinton eats children. But I can believe that she might eat children. Doug Sweet, of Hudgins, Virginia, one of the mob of Trump supporters arrested for invading the Capitol © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I saw how easy it would be, as a parent, to accept the idea that my children deserve healthcare and education.  Virginia Kruta, associate editor of Daily Caller, a conservative news and opinion website, telling viewers of Fox and Friends how horrified she was by what she heard at a Democratic rally in St. Louis featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who advocated Medicare for all © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I've never really felt it was society's responsibility to take care of other people's children. Ron Johnson, defending his oposition to government helping families afford childcare © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Since more illegal immigrants are rushing the border, more kids are being separated from their parents and temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps. Laura Ingraham © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say  These are not innocent Palestinian civilians. Brian Mast,  when asked about Palestinian babies killed by Israeli attackers in Gaza © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say We need to have more kids,  we need to have an opportunity to do that,  and I thought this was the right thing to do. Tommy Tuberville,  on why he supports the Alabama Supreme Court's decision that effectively banned IVF (in vitro fertilization) in the state © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say We’re effectively run in this country, via  the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?  J. D. Vance to Tucker Carlson © 2024 Kwiple.com
Ukraine War  One disturbing effect of this cruel madness and invasion of an innocent and sovereign state is that an entire generation of children will have a clearly defined enemy, an irreversible consequence. Haska Shyyan, a Ukrainian writer, Financial Times, March 4, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Veterans In 1990, 40% of young Americans had a military veteran for a parent; in 2014 only 16% did. The Economist, October 28, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality American elites have stored more wealth than they can consume. This creates three problems for everyone else. First, elites invest their surpluses in replicating their advantages. … The second response to having such vast wealth is to create other kinds of scarcity [especially of nonmaterial goods like Ivy League acceptances]. … The third challenge is the hardest to fix. … Kids must study harder and for longer than their parents to find jobs that do not often repay the effort. Edward Luce, Financial Times, February 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality When Donald was still in diapers, he and his siblings had a trust fund. His share was about $12,000 a year, which in the late nineteen forties was roughly four times the typical income for a married couple with children if the husband held a full-time job. David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump  © 2016 Kwiple.com