Parenting & Family Quote by Marian Wright Edelman

Edelman’s line is a moral boomerang disguised as a gentle reminder: the “future” isn’t a private inheritance we can lock in a family safe; it’s a public asset we’re temporarily managing. The phrase “hold in trust” is doing heavy lifting. It borrows the language of law and stewardship to suggest obligation, not preference. You don’t get to “trust” something and then plead personal taste when you mismanage it. By framing the future as a fiduciary responsibility, Edelman turns policy into ethics: the standard isn’t what benefits my kid today, but what justice requires across lines of class, race, neighborhood, and citizenship.

The subtext cuts against a particularly American instinct: the myth that you can secure your children’s lives by opting out. Move to a “better” district, buy the tutoring, insulate the household, and you’ve done your duty. Edelman refuses that bargain. “Other people’s children” is deliberately plain, even slightly uncomfortable. It forces recognition of distance - these are kids the listener doesn’t know, may not like, may have been trained to fear - and then insists their fate is structurally connected to “our own.”

The intent lands squarely in Edelman’s activist context: child welfare, civil rights, and the long fight against a politics that treats vulnerable children as someone else’s problem. She’s arguing that fairness isn’t charity; it’s infrastructure. Underfunded schools, unequal healthcare, punitive policing, and insecure housing don’t stay neatly contained. They shape the society your children will grow up inside, whether you approve or not.