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This is the future kids want

This is the future kids want

Yahoo29-05-2025
This story originally appeared in , Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. .
Earlier this year, I went to Career Day at my older kid's school. The experience was sometimes humbling — at an elementary school career fair, no one can compete with the firefighters — but it was also incredibly joyful. Hearing from kids about what they want to be when they grow up can be a balm for anxious times.
Adults may be fearful for the future, kids are still dreaming and planning, figuring out the place they're going to inhabit in a world that's constantly changing. Yes, kids today will come of age in a time of climate change, war, and democratic backsliding — but they're also going to create new art, invent new technologies, and pioneer new policies that will make the world better and richer in ways we can't even imagine yet.
With all this in mind, I asked a few kids — including some of the Scholastic Kid Reporters who have helped me out in the past — to tell me what they want to be when they grow up, and what changes they hope to see in the world. A selection of their responses, which have been condensed and edited, are below. If the kids in your life would like to weigh in too, you can reach me at anna.north@vox.com.
I want to be a gymnastics teacher. I want to get married and have kids, maybe five. I want to go to France. I want to do ballet in France.
I want to do anything I want. I want more kittens on the planet. I want everyone to have their own house with their own family. I want self-driving lawnmowers. I don't want people to eat chickens, who should be treated like a princess.
—Mairead, age 8
During Covid, our math and science teacher would show us these videos about space. Those videos really inspired me. The idea that there might be life other than planet Earth was just really cool to me. Our universe is so big, there's so many places to explore, so many new things to learn.
[As a Scholastic Kid Reporter, I wrote a story] about the total solar eclipse. I remember interviewing Mr. James Tralie. That was really cool, because he worked at NASA, but he was also an animator, and I also love art and drawing. From that experience, I learned being part of NASA and learning about space is not only about being a scientist or being an engineer, it's also about doing art, doing music, and just doing what you truly love related to space.
When I was younger, I loved playing with Legos. I love building new things. I've learned a lot about being an aerospace technician or an engineer: building rockets, fixing issues related to space technology. I also love exploring. So being an astronomer is one of my dreams.
I just don't think it makes sense that there's only one planet in our entire universe where there's life. I hope to find life on other planets in the future.
—Aiden, age 13
I want to be a teacher because I see in my class a lot of different faces and colors of everyone, and I think it's going to be important to help other people grow like I grow in my school.
In my class, I have people who are shy, people who need extra help, and people who are really smart, so I feel like getting education for everybody to reach the same [level] is going to be hard.
—Kimaaya, age 8
I would like to taxidermy a lamprey eel.
—Eleanor, age 6
Interviewing ukulelist James Hill as a Scholastic Kid Reporter and talking to him about music showed me that there are many different ways to play an instrument. On his ukulele, he doesn't just play a couple of chords — he makes creative musical sounds, even drumbeats. Talking with him inspired me to become a performer on the ukulele and guitar.
Not to brag, but I feel like I'm very skilled with ukulele. I feel like if someone gave me a sheet of music, I could learn it and play it for them maybe the next day perfectly.
My biggest goal is to experiment more with the notes and strings, learn some more tricks on it, and maybe someday make my own album.
—Owen, age 12
I want to do research in politics or economics that could bring about real changes in our world.
Growing up during the Covid pandemic, we were all stuck online. I was seeing a lot of stuff about the Black Lives Matter movement, lots of Instagram stuff about LGBT rights, there was the Trump administration, and it really got me curious about politics and social justice.
I'm from Hong Kong as well, and in 2019 there were the protests that occurred about democracy. I'm really obsessed with the idea of preserving democracy, so I think that just pushed me further into reading more about politics.
I think you could use the quantitative bit of economics and tie it into the qualitative bit of politics, and use data, like observing patterns and everything, and apply that to something that could cause change in the world. I think I would be studying politics and economics so that I could keep both doors open, depending on what I want to pursue in the future. Because I'm still 17. I'm not set yet, but I think both of these paths offer me the education, the knowledge to potentially bring impact.
—Macy, age 17
Watching the Olympics, hearing about doing archery, and seeing pictures [inspired me to want to be an Olympic archer]. Last year, I started saving up for an archery bow, and now I have one. We go to archery club every Sunday.
[I also want to be] a bat scientist. A few days ago, we went on a bat watch in the middle of the night. Have you heard of something called a bat detector? It's a little device, and it can intercept different kinds of bat calls with this little dial, and you turn it [to] different levels, and you can listen for bats. We were at this wood cabin, and there was a big light for the bugs, and the bats would quickly go for them. So we didn't really see them clearly, but we heard them very loud.
[I want to] study about bats: what they eat, what size they are, and where they like to go and everything.
—Flower, age 8
Your mom says you want to be an owl scientist. What makes you want to study owls?
They're so pretty.
What's your favorite owl?
Snow owl.
What do owls eat?
Mice, rabbits, bugs, bats. … If I have a pet owl, and Flower has a pet bat… [trails off]
—Tabby, age 4, Flower's sister
A 4-year-old girl came to the US legally in 2023 to get treatment for a severe medical condition called short bowel syndrome. Now her family's legal status has been terminated, and she could die without access to care.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop recommending routine Covid vaccines for healthy children, part of a series of policy changes that could mean kids can't access the shots, even if their families want them.
Kids with autism can be at heightened risk of drowning, and traditional swim classes aren't always accessible to them. Now some nonprofits are stepping in to help.
My older kid and I have been reading Hooky, a graphic novel about twin witches who miss the school bus one day and become embroiled in a variety of hijinks. Fair warning: Hooky was originally serialized and there is a lot going on. I have repeatedly had to admit to my kid that I am confused.
This week I was on one of my favorite parenting podcasts, The Longest Shortest Time, talking about my experience getting a salpingectomy, a form of permanent birth control that can reduce your risk of ovarian cancer. You can listen here!
Two weeks ago, I wrote about 'dry texting' and how teens use their phones to avoid in-person conflict with one another. Young people had a lot to tell me about this phenomenon, more than I could include in the original story. So I wanted to share what Gracelynn, age 12 and a Scholastic Kid Reporter, told me in an email:
Gracelynn said online arguments can be more complex than in-person confrontation because 'when you are chatting online, they could copy and paste the text or media image and use it against you.' With in-person arguments, it's also easier for adults to overhear and intervene. Gracelynn also noted that even though her school uses GoGuardian software to keep kids off certain websites during the day, 'they still manage to pull off crazy things.'
Thank you again to Gracelynn and everyone who talked to me for that story, and as always, you can reach me with comments or questions at anna.north@vox.com.
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In a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Rollins, the president of the country's top egg industry trade group wrote that dismantling state laws like Proposition 12 would squander the industry's investments in cage-free production and create an 'additional burden' for egg farmers. Activists with the animal protection group The Humane League protest outside of a Buffalo Wild Wings, asking the company to phase out battery cages from its supply chain. Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images The pork industry, however, has been an entirely different story. For the last six years, meat trade groups have repeatedly sued against Prop 12. Two years ago, the US Supreme Court voted to uphold California's law. Having failed in the courts, the pork industry, led by the trade group National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), is now hoping that Congress will make it illegal for states to develop animal welfare standards for animal products sold within their borders, as California and Massachusetts have done. The industry has argued that Prop 12 would lead to mass pork shortages in California — which didn't transpire — and skyrocketing prices for pork nationwide. The law did moderately raise prices in California, but it didn't affect national prices. And I would argue that California's modest price hike is a small price to pay to prevent what a reasonable person would only call torture. Temple Grandin, the renowned animal scientist, has likened gestation crates to forcing a human to live their entire life in an airline seat. The pork industry's brewing civil war over cage-free bacon NPPC has also claimed that Prop 12 would put many small pork producers out of business. But smaller producers are less likely to use crates, so the law actually gives them an edge by increasing demand for crate-free pork. According to the nonprofit Americans for Family Farmers, around 500 pig farmers have signed a letter opposing legislative attempts to dismantle cage-free laws, and some smaller and midsized meat companies — like Niman Ranch, True Story Foods, and ButcherBox — have taken the same position. Some bigger farmers want to keep crate-free laws intact, too. One of them is Brent Hershey, a pork industry veteran based in Pennsylvania with 3,000 female breeding pigs, or sows, who give birth to nearly 80,000 piglets a year. Hershey had begun using gestation crates in the 1980s, and for a while, he brushed off criticism of the crates, both from people he took on tours of his farm and animal rights activists working to ban them in various states. 'Over and over again I would take people to see the farm, and I always got a reaction out of ladies. They would see that gestation crate, and they would just be like — right away — 'You mean they're in that all the time? When do you let them out of there?'' he said. 'There was always a negative reaction.' Sows in gestation crates. Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media Over time, he began to question the welfare of pigs confined in gestation crates, and so did his daughter. 'One day, my daughter just looked at me and she said, 'Dad, we are not going to accept that,'' Hershey said. ''We are going to demand that you do it a better way.'' Over time, he started to experiment with crate-free systems. Then a week after the Supreme Court upheld Proposition 12, he tore out his farm's gestation crates. Now, he says, his 3,000 sows have more space than the minimum 24 square feet per pig that California requires. While the extra square footage costs him more money, he's seen a few benefits: Fewer pigs die prematurely, and he's able to charge a small premium for his pork. But he argues that it doesn't make sense to compare the higher cost of crate-free pork to that of conventional pork, as though gestation crates are a reasonable baseline. 'Why are we using it as a measurement?' he said. 'You're measuring yourself against a mistake.' Pennsylvania-based Clemens Food Group, the nation's fifth largest fresh pork processor, which buys pigs from Hershey, wants to keep crate-free laws in place, too. 'Many in the industry, including Clemens, have invested significant capital (and human capital) to meet the regulations set by the people of California and Massachusetts,' a spokesperson told Vox in an email. 'Accordingly, Clemens remains vehemently opposed to any legislative or regulatory action that would overrule' those laws. This story was first featured in the Processing Meat newsletter Sign up here for Future Perfect's biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more. Have questions or comments on this newsletter? Email us at futureperfect@ Other top pork companies, including Tyson Foods, JBS, and Seaboard Foods are all listed as Prop 12-compliant vendors by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, though none of them responded to an interview request for this story. Yet the National Pork Producers Council is still working to kill Prop 12. Hershey, who served on the board of the organization's Pennsylvania chapter for 20 years, said the trade group is out of touch with many consumers and is fighting for relevance within the industry. NPPC is really 'struggling to justify their existence,' Hershey said. NPPC declined an interview request for this story and directed me to its blog post about the Justice Department's lawsuit. At a US House Agriculture Committee hearing on Prop 12 this week, meat industry representatives were invited to testify, while animal welfare scientists, animal advocates, and small farmers were not. It all amounts to political theater to set the stage for upcoming Farm Bill negotiations, where lawmakers are expected to try to fold in legislation to nullify state cage-free laws. Even if it passes, though, I suspect Hershey will still be glad he tore the gestation crates out of his farm: 'This is not rocket science,' he told me. 'A 10-year-old can look at a gestation crate and tell you that's not okay.'

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