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Author: Burkett, Elinor |
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Title: The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless |
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Fiction? Anthology? |
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Publisher: The Free Press |
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Date: 2000 |
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ISBN: ISBN 0-684-86303-0 |
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Series Name: |
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Physical description: hardbound 256 pages |
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Relevance to doaskdotell: “family values” |
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Review: The
author, Elinor Burkett, could have titled the book,
“The Baby Boondoggle”! The Free Press enjoys a
reputation as the major publishing imprint (it belongs to Simon &
Schuster) that promotes discussion of individual liberty and generally rather
libertarian precepts. So,
congratulations, the big New York houses are finally getting it right: we
have to look at the undercoating of our political life to see how issues play
out in the personal lives of real people.
And here we have it: is government, and are well-meaning employers,
forcing childless adults to make personal sacrifices to support parents,
“families with children”? If so, should childless adults make that
sacrifice? Is having children a behavioral choice or
an obligation? Incredible questions?? There is
indeed a smoldering “competitive” tension between parents and “independent”
childless adults. It hasn’t been talked about a lot. At the time that I wrote Do Ask, Do Tell it had, to my observation, been developed
at length only once, in a 1997 People
familiar with this site and with me know that this issue has always been a
bone for me. It certainly has an effect on gays and lesbians, and on many other
singles, in ways that are more complicated, both practically and morally,
than even Burkett presents in her book. Dr.
Burkett’s book is somewhat repetitive, somewhat hysterical, at times, as she
drives her point home. Her book is in three parts: an exposition of the
interaction between the workplace and public family policy, a development of
the notion that political rhetoric (often from “liberals” and “feminists”)
and opportunism is driving the “family friendly” phenomenon (she points out
that the childless are often too “individualistic” to organize well), and a
recapitulation of her own recommendations, which she calls a “balancing act.”
Her topic sentence: “It’s affirmative
action—the preferential treatment of one group designed to correct real or
perceived discrimination or inequity—based on reproductive choice” (p.
21). “Equal pay for equal work” is supposed to be the mantra of
workplace non-discrimination, but “family friendliness” demands that people
with “family responsibilities” intentionally be paid more (indeed, the “family
wage”). The childless face
discrimination both in government tax and housing policy (for example, you
can’t live in an “adults only” development until 55!) and in being cut out of
workplace perks. So much
of “family friendly” public policy is couched in potentially deceptive
language, to protect parents and expectant mothers and fathers from
“discrimination.” But there is a mathematical, tautological fact. We cannot “help” one group without
demanding sacrifices or subsidies from others. Sometimes the price may not be
noticeable, if there is enough “wealth” to go around. But, money allocated to
paid parents’ benefits (paid day care, paid parental leave, etc.) is money no
longer available for pay raises for everyone else. Now,
there is a difference between government-mandated family favoritism and
private family preference based upon legitimate business interests, a point
which Burkett does skirt. If I need a
topnotch web administrator, a person with four children may demand paid
family leave, paid parental benefits, paid hardware for working from home—so
that a $70,000 salary costs $100,000 a year.
A single person with no dependents, no marriage plans and the same
qualifications and, frankly, lower living costs and more disposable income,
may feel he can fill the same position for $65,000 and only $10,000 in
benefits, so that he works at a “discount” for $75,000 and lives very
well. The employer has to make a
“business decision” on whom to hire. But whatever the employer does, it is
the marketplace that is driving his decision, not legislation, public policy,
or even “morality.” At least, this
example constitutes the other side of this issue. The fact is, people with
dependents “need” more income and benefits and will tend to expect them from
the marketplace. Of course, the role of tax policy and the use of pre-tax
benefits complicates the issue. Progressive
companies may offer the childless other pre-tax benefits in a cafeteria plan,
but then “families” are not longer so favored. Bad employers might
intentionally favor “families” but not tell employees upfront that this is
their policy (and even try to discourage discussion of the issue, claiming
that mere discussion is distracting and possibly hostile). The libertarian
will maintain that the market fixes this.
Unattached people don’t have to work for deceptive “family friendly”
companies if they have the skills to appeal to employers who really can’t
afford to pay for anything but talent and performance. Actually, single people without
dependents may, in some situations, take home more money while costing their
employers less, because “family” health insurance costs several times as
much, including contributory portions.
This anomaly goes away when a union wins a contract for full company
payment of family health benefits! Or,
the childless may get the short end of the stick. They may be forced to take
the worst shifts, work holidays and weekends, and in salaried-exempt
environments, work overtime for parent colleagues without extra pay, comp
time, or even reimbursement for expenses.
This tends to happen more in sales organizations or in law firms.
Parents are often unaware that others may be making sacrifices for them, or
they may assume that younger workers will get their “investment” back when
they have kids of their own (I’ve been asked more than once when I’ll join
the crowd by becoming a dad myself, by people who don’t even conceive of what
it must be like to be a gay male.) In
information technology, where parents can work from home on computers (which
may be provided at their own expense) there tends to be much less of a
problem. (As a single gay male, I’ve worked a significant amount of overtime
for a parent-colleague
without pay just once in the past eight years.) But even in I.T., in the new twenty-four
hour world of open systems architecture, e-commerce and dedicated customer
service, this may well grow quickly into an issue, as some parents with young
children feel beleaguered by the demands of staying on call or taking
graveyard shifts. It’s
easy, if we look around at all, to become convinced that “we” must do
something to help “families with children.”
No doubt, raising kids—dealing with all the medical risks, the
behaviors, the evil influences out there in a world of an open Internet,
violent video games and moviesm drugs, guns, the
family intimacies—and needing two incomes (perhaps two jobs for one
breadwinner) is very tough. Some kids turn out well and some don’t. And, as I wrote in my own book, in the
mood of the early 1990’s the corporate economics—plant closings, mergers,
downsizings, the “entrepreneurial” workplace—could be very hard on families
compared to singles, who may be able to work
“cheaper” and lowball their competing coworkers out of layoffs. The economy is supposedly much better now,
and we ought to be able to help parents, perhaps? As a Bill Moyer’s PBS documentary that
followed several families through the 1990’s shows, it’s not that easy,
especially for blue-collar types who had kids before they had anchored their
careers. But, as Burkitt asks, which families need special care from
public policy? Maybe poor families
should get help, but should high-salaried parents in the workplace force
their childless colleagues to subsidize them? When people choose to have
children, do they have the “moral right” to demand that others help subsidize
them? This all
depends on how you look at it, doesn’t it! After all, family values are
community values. We’re not just talking about “fairness,” we’re talking
about social cohesion and “ordered liberty.” Hilary Clinton, after all, wrote
It Takes a Village. Or does it take two committed parents to follow up
on their choices? There is
a psychological spin beneath this that is really hard to get at. In Chapter 3, of Do
Ask, Do Tell, I wrote, “There is friction between those who see
themselves as capable of controlling their lives, and those who believe that
self-concept comes from the direct reassurance of being needed by others.” I
had expressed a similar pontification in an essay in GLIL’s
1994 issue
of Quill. This, I still
believe, is getting at it. The past
fifty years have seen a technological revolution, spurned perhaps by war and
national defense, that has apparently justified the
notion that you should become your own person and express yourself, before
making commitments to others. It’s more important to have yourself than to
have a marriage. Some may dispute this, and say that the tide is changing, as
evidenced by all the new “family friendliness.” Even so, today there is a
tendency among many of us to care about others only when it suits our
purposes. We lose sight of the ability
to love people “as people” but rather as object that can turn us on, please
us, or impress us with their merit. I certainly see this in myself. Family
used to be the way “unconditional love” was supposed to get done. The
mechanism of heterosexual courtship, consummation, the taming of men by women
into sexual commitment, all made “family” look like a prime number 13,
something everyone participated in, beyond the calculation of economic
self-interest. No more, perhaps, when
the “Playboy” mentality and then the debate over “gay rights” can make
heterosexual men question everything.
Now, “family” is a forum of personal choice. So, we are led Burkett’s
astonishing discussion of Ben Wattenberg and Jonathan Rauch, passing through
dire warnings about the bipartisan political appeal (even reaching to saving
Social Security) of “a pro-family program that redistributes money from the
childless to the child-rearing” (“the redistribution of wealth from the
childless to the childed”) for potentially eugenic
purposes, ending with: “And what
of those childless, who will be forced to pay to motivate the ‘right’ people
to reproduce? Neither Rauch nor Wattenberg seemed any more worried about them
than were the politicians and feminist activists advancing that same
redistribution. They are ‘free riders,’ Wattenberg says. “People who have no
children … are in a sense, cheating the system.’” P. 146. So, then,
isn’t the “problem,” not just childlessness but having no dependents? Isn’t the real battle the one between those
who have to care for others and support others and those with no one to
support but themselves? I have to
admit, I am one of the latter. It used to be that people like me stayed home
to take care of aging parents, and never moved away. No more.
Now we expect to become psychological astronauts (or maybe physical
ones, as we’re just independent enough psychologically for the Along
these lines, the debate of same-sex marriage and gay parenting drops in (a
topic Burkett barely mentions). We could,
as Jonathan Rauch suggests in (Free Press, again) Beyond Queer,
“expect” marriage and probably adoptive parenting or other caretaking from
gays, and society might be much better off.
There are plenty of kids needing adoption and plenty of very competent
potential parents among gays, even the men, to the surprise of
“conservatives.” But,
recognizing this, we can go down a scary path, as Burkett hints (but limiting
her argument to childlessness). We could, for example, imagine a world in
which no adult over thirty gets a good job (or a mortgage) until he or she
has demonstrated the ability to provide for somebody besides the self. (Burkett, on p. 203, reacting to a 1977
Carnegie Council proposal of “full employment for parents” warns that such a
public policy slippery slope—maybe couched deceptively as “non discrimination
against parents”—can lead to legal second-class status for non-parents [or
those without dependents, following my “Singapore” model] way beyond what we
know today: employers could be required to offer jobs to parents first (and
spare them from layoffs), be required to provide paid parental benefits at
the expense of non-parents, and be required to give parents first choice of
shift assignments, and even exclusion from all “nightcall”
responsibilities.) A ukase to make
oneself a family provider might conceivably be accomplished not so much by
law as by allowing the culture to experiment further through the marketplace
(and, in fact, it would require repealing quite a few laws) Maybe it works this way on some other Urantian planet or Clive Barker dominion. In a way, this does sound “fair” (and,
after all, the moral underpinning of individualism must be fairness and
deservedness) even if it involves psychological strip-mining. Perhaps a more
“modest proposal” would be this: companies are free to, and perhaps “expected
to” offer modest preferences to those with live-in dependents, as long
as they announce their policies openly at the time of hire. Allowing gay
marriage (and facilitating gay parenting) would make this much more
acceptable. It would also possible to regard elderly parents or relatives as
dependents in this sense; Burkett mentions the argument that a f I don’t know whether such a draconian “moral” development would alter the “Map of the Human Heart.” Indeed, the Oscar Wilde legacy has expressed itself in our culture as a love of aesthetics, of the perfect and beautiful and exciting, at the expense of loving plain people. Outside of a religious paradigm, who can say if this is right or wrong? Ethics and epistemology, after all, demand postulates. We certainly are coming to appreciate diversity of talent and psychological direction and to resist prejudice against people who are emotionally different, and yet we seem secretly troubled that such people might get a “free ride” or that their “sense and sensibility” change the rules for the rest of us. There is a danger that our psychological individualism can lead less able people (and I mean adults) out in the cold, without an unquestionable family context to give their lives meaning. Perhaps we do need some cultural “rules” expecting everyone to support others or otherwise to take periodical sabbaticals where they throw their entire lives into helping the underprivileged. But I do know that when we respect the psychological diversity of people, and are open to understanding what makes people very different from us tick, and work with them to allow them to find their best productive opportunities regardless of otherwise authoritarian moral judgments, we wind up with a more human world for everyone, with more to go around. On Here is an There are more comments about this (“no kidding” -- Chapter 6 notes on my second DADT book) at this footnote link. |
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Related reviews: Cornel West: The War on Parents: Crittenden: The Price of Motherhood; Morse: Love and Economics Phillip Longman The Empty Cradle |
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