Beginning in the early 1980s, advertisements on milk

cartons A carton is a box or container usually made of liquid packaging board, paperboard and sometimes of corrugated fiberboard. Many types of cartons are used in packaging. Sometimes a carton is also called a box. Types of cartons Folding cartons ...

in the United States were used to publicize cases of missing children. The printing of such ads continued until the late 1990s when other programs became more popular for serving the same purpose. Contemporary popular media portrayed the practice in fiction, often in a satirical manner.

History

During the late 1970s and 1980s in the United States, missing child cases garnered a great deal of news media attention. Chief among these were the

disappearance of Etan Patz Etan Kalil Patz (; October 9, 1972 – May 25, 1979) was an Americans, American boy who was six years old on May 25, 1979, when he disappeared on his way to his school bus stop in the SoHo, Manhattan, SoHo neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. His di ...

(1979) and the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh (1981), whose story was told in the 1983 television movie, ''

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

''. These reports developed into a type of moral panic called "

stranger danger "Stranger danger" is the idea or warning that all strangers can potentially be dangerous. The phrase is intended to encapsulate the danger associated with adults whom children do not know. The phrase has found widespread usage and many children w ...

". In 1984, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded. In September 1984, Anderson Erickson Dairy in Des Moines, Iowa began printing the photographs of two boys — Johnny Gosch (age 12, missing since September 5, 1982) and Eugene Martin (age 13, missing since August 12, 1984) — who went missing while delivering newspapers for the ''Des Moines Register''. A similar milk-carton advertising program for missing children launched in Chicago, Illinois with support from the police and statewide in California with support from the government. In December 1984/January 1985, the nonprofit

National Child Safety Council National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

began a nationwide program called the Missing Children Milk Carton Program in the United States of putting photos of missing children on milk cartons. By March 1985, 700 of 1600 independent dairies in the United States had adopted the practice of publishing photos of missing children on milk cartons. Etan Patz was one of the first missing children, and perhaps the most famous of them, to be sought with this strategy. In 1979, when the six-year-old boy went missing on the way to the schoolbus in Manhattan, there had been no system in the United States for tracking missing children nationwide. In 1985, Patz's photo was printed on milk cartons so that consumers purchasing milk at retail markets could be encouraged to look for the missing child. Although many featured children including Gosch, Martin, and Patz were never found, success was the case of seven-year-old Bonnie Lohman, whose mother and stepfather had taken her away from her father when she was three. The girl's neighbors recognized her face on a milk carton. The girl had seen the same milk carton and recognized herself, though she did not independently understand what it meant.

Decline of use

The practice had begun to fade by the late 1980s and became obsolete when the Amber alert system was created in 1996. Today, AMBER Alerts use technology including notifications to mobile phones to give up-to-date information about potential child abductions. Yvonne Jewkes and Travis Linnemann write in ''Media and Crime in the U.S.'': One of the more recent appearances of a face on a milk carton was when 16-year-old

Molly Bish Molly, Mollie or mollies may refer to: Animals * '' Poecilia'', a genus of fishes ** '' Poecilia sphenops'', a fish species * A female mule (horse–donkey hybrid) People * Molly (name) or Mollie, a female given name, including a list of perso ...

disappeared from her lifeguarding job in Massachusetts in 2000. Her parents became active in raising awareness about missing children. The girl's remains were found three years later, five miles from where she disappeared.

Criticism

Overstating risk

The campaigns brought attention to the idea of "

". However, most of the abducted children pictured on milk cartons during the 1980s were taken by a noncustodial divorced parent, not a stranger.

Racially biased

Standup comedian Eddie Griffin performed a "White Kids on Milk Cartons" routine based on his recollection that the children featured on the cartons were usually white. This is not representative of the demographics of missing children. In 1997, while making up only 15 percent of the U.S. child population, black (non-Hispanic) children were 42 percent of all nonfamily abductions. Hispanic children were also slightly more likely to be victimized this way, making up 16 percent of the population but 23 percent of nonfamily abductions. By contrast, White (non-Hispanic) children, at 65 percent of the population, were 35 percent of the nonfamily abductions. Natalie Wilson, cofounder of the Black and Missing Foundation, told ''Essence'' Magazine in 2014: "In the field, I've seen a majority of black missing children classified as runaways, who don't get Amber Alerts."

Legal issues

"There were some legal issues that arose in the mid 1980s about who could post a child's photo on a milk carton", said Donna Linder, Executive Director of Child Find Of America.

Emotionally distressing

In the late 1980s, the pediatrician Benjamin Spock said that the cartons terrified small children at the breakfast table with the implication that they, too, might be abducted.

No data to track success

It is hard to say how successful these advertisements were, since "nobody kept any hard, verifiable numbers on the program as a whole." "What it did was raise the level of awareness," said Johnny Gosch's mother. "It didn't necessarily bring us tips or leads we could actually use."

Motivated by tax breaks

Adam Garfinkle Adam M. Garfinkle (born June 1, 1951) is an American historian and political scientist and the founding editor of ''The American Interest'', a bimonthly public policy magazine. He was previously editor of ''The National Interest.'' He has been a ...

suggested a financial motive: "For many years companies got 'public service' tax breaks by putting pictures of 'missing children' on milk cartons."

References

External links

Milk carton kids
a podcast from 99% Invisible
This is Criminal Podcast - Milk Carton Kids
Child safety Milk in culture Paperboard packaging