Why is there a need to protect and nurture children

Of course this is a more universal question than simply relating to "A Christmas Carol". Children are our precious gift to the world. They are the fragile embodiment of our society; they are literally our future. They need to be guided just as we needed to be when we were kids. Children figure prominently in Dickens’s classic. They represent all that is precious (Tiny Tim) and all that is neglected in the children "ignorance" and "want".