My wife and I were eating cereal at the kitchen table. I turned the milk carton to get a closer look. It had a picture of a smiling man in a puffy vest and rubber boots, standing in a pasture next to a clean Holstein. The headline was about how the brand sourced all its milk from local farmers.
I leaned toward my wife. “They should really look into all these missing farmers around here.”
She stared at me blankly. Then she put her bowl in the sink and walked away.
It’s because she’s Italian, I reasoned, and didn’t grow up with missing children on milk cartons. Not because the joke wasn’t funny.
In truth, I don’t think I’ve actually seen any missing children announcements on milk cartons either, since we drank milk from the bulk tank when I was young. Still, the concept was such an integrated part of American culture – always referenced in sitcoms, songs and other media – that it felt like it was part of my childhood. The phrase “stranger danger,” usually said in jest, also remains from those times, and I hear my niece and nephew repeat it facetiously as well. Nonetheless, the origins of “the milk carton kids” and “stranger danger” are less humorous, coming from a time when the country felt afraid.
In 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared in Lower Manhattan on his way to the school bus. Four years later, President Ronald Reagan designated the anniversary of Etan's disappearance, May 25, as National Missing Children's Day. In 1981, another 6-year-old, Adam Walsh, was abducted from a Sears department store and found murdered a few days later. The television film Adam, airing two years later, attracted an incredibly large audience at the time, fueling the national panic over missing children. In 1984, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was created in response.
The issue so prominent in public concern, some organizations and companies looked for ways to help find missing children, including Anderson Erickson Dairy in Des Moines, Iowa. In September 1984, they printed the pictures of two local boys who had been abducted on their paper routes, albeit two years apart. Quickly other fluid milk processors followed suit, with missing children appearing on milk cartons across the U.S. within weeks. In December 1984, the National Child Safety Council turned it into a nationally coordinated effort, with the faces of children put forth by over 700 different manufacturers. Etan Patz was one of the first children to appear on the national Missing Children Milk Carton Program.
For as suddenly expansive as the milk carton program was, it was not overly fruitful. There are records of a 7-year-old abducted by a family member who had seen herself on a carton and convinced the adult to bring her back to her father, and a runaway teen who had returned home after finding her picture. However, success stories are hard to unearth, especially as there was no data tracking the program. Some criticized the effort as needlessly scaring children and perpetuating the idea that all strangers are threatening. Opponents pointed out that most abducted children were taken by noncustodial parents instead of those unknown to the child.
The Missing Children Milk Carton Program declined in use as plastic jugs became more popular, and then was replaced completely by the Amber Alert system in 1996. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Amber Alerts have helped return 1,140 children, three-quarters of them within six hours. Additionally, other venues are now utilized to help draw attention to missing children, from billboards to public service announcements to gas station televisions. Social media also offers another way to spread local information quickly, allowing the community to help disseminate warnings and participate in the search.
The more cynical side of me ponders if the most notable detail of the milk carton campaign is that society was capable of being shocked back then. I do not know if the number of missing children increased during the '70s and '80s, or just the awareness of their cases. Regardless, I wonder if we’ve now become so desensitized to heinous events that instances such as Etan Patz’s disappearance would barely remain in the news, let alone spark a national reaction.
Still and all, maybe another part of the story is this: Average people and small companies found a way to help in a time of shared crisis. People looked to the simple things around them to make a difference, choosing to take a long shot at helping someone they didn’t know, even if it cost them an advertising opportunity on their packaging.
