(FORTUNE Magazine) – Behalf of the Grownups Writing about Benjamin Spock's new collaborator a fortnight ago, we briefly thought to mention that the media keep calling this person--his name is Michael B. Rothenberg, M.D.--a ''children's advocate.'' However, we were not at that point prepared to pause and deal with this puzzling term, which implies that most people are opposed to children or at least unconcerned with their well-being and that the fledgling co-author of Dr. Spock's Baby and - Child Care therefore has a unique selling proposition when he casts himself as a kidophile. It now appears that we must broaden the discussion to include not only Rothenberg but also children's advocacy at the organizational level. This brings us to the Children's Defense Fund, which has just held its annual convention, a ceremony in Washington featuring addresses by Jonas Salk and New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and extensive media coverage, which has been totally uncritical up to now. Coming off newspaper accounts of the festivities, we have requisitioned the clips on the organization and yearn to share two fascinating findings: Finding No. 1 is that the CDF's interests range quite a way from children. It is, you might say, concerned with children in the same way that the National Organization for Women is concerned with women. In both cases, the folks being alluded to on the letterhead are essentially a gimmick for promoting the entire Bella Abzug-George McGovern agenda: endless expansion of federal social programs and extensive cutbacks in defense. The so-called Children's Defense Budget, published by the CDF at convention time, ridicules the notion that defense spending provides any security for children. It calls for more affirmative action, more job training programs, more legal services for the poor, a higher minimum wage, and you name it.

Finding No. 2 is that the CDF has been among the radical groups that have to some extent undermined authority in the schools by asserting new ''rights'' for schoolchildren and bringing lawyers onto the scene when kids are suspended or otherwise punished. The CDF earned itself a footnote in legal history by filing an amicus brief in the famous case of the spiked punch at the high school dance, the case being famous mainly for the Supreme Court's remarkable decision (in 1975) that the punch spikers had been denied due process before being suspended, which was just what the children's advocates had been saying all along. To be scrupulously fair in our reporting here, we should possibly add that the CDF did not proceed to argue that punch tastes better when spiked.