Our children are our future is a phrase often used to promote or justify investment in children. We need a societal commitment to promote positive outcomes to human development and to ensure that all individuals live up to their full potential; positive development does not occur naturally in the context of the stresses and challenges with which children grow up in today’s world.

This phrase “our children are our future” is most often crouched in economic terms. Labor needs qualified workers. If people do not appropriately produce and contribute to the economy, our ranking as a world economic leader will suffer. Hence, positive outcomes are evaluated in terms of individuals’ productivity emerging from cognitive development, education, and training. For this reason, math and science education is highly valued and promoted.

Another area in which positive development is often assessed is mental health and social functioning. Is the individual psychologically adjusted, free of mental illness, and able to function adequately and effectively in his/her social world? There is a multibillion industry oriented to helping individuals with social functioning, including psychological therapies and drugs.
Most of our research on human development emphasizes these two areas: cognitive development into work, and social development into mentally healthy functioning and relationship formation. Much of developmental psychology is oriented to studying successes and failures of development in each of these areas. Both are of course very important areas of adult functioning in which to evaluate positive developmental outcomes.

However, we also believe firmly in democracy as a form of government and promote it worldwide. We cannot in fact maintain a democratic society without the adequate and appropriate participation of citizens. If societies do not support youth’s development into citizenship, they as adults will not flourish as citizens and democracy as we know it will be threatened. I therefore believe and argue in this paper that civic engagement is an equally important outcome from which to evaluate children and youth’s positive development. Civics education should be of the same priority as math and science education.

The goal of this essay is to discuss the value of a positive youth development (PYD) approach to both research and policy on children and youth, and to argue for the need for research and policy that addresses youth’s positive political development.