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Author (or Editor): Hewlett, Sylvia Ann and West, Cornel |
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Title: The War Against
Parents: What We Can Do for America’s Beleaguered Moms and Dads |
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Fiction? Anthology? |
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Publisher: Houghton Mifflin |
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Date: 1999 |
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ISBN: 0393957974. |
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Series Name: |
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Physical description: hardbound |
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Relevance to HPPUB: family values |
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Review: The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for
America’s Beleaguered Moms and Dads, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West
(Houghton Mifflin, 1999), ISBN 0393957974. Hewlett, in her own television interview on ABC “Good
Morning America” ( First, a note on the format of the book. Part I,
comprising the first two chapters, present alternating prose sections by
Hewlett and West, many of them autobiographical, setting up a non-fiction
narrative technique that I used in DADT and that Tafel
used in his own book about being a gay Republican. The remaining parts
consist often social policy discussion, seasoned with many third person
parenting accounts (some quotes), again setting up a book that could be
filmable. And she does not necessarily contradict Burkett (note
below). Indeed, many parents struggle
in today’s competitive world, and on the other hand many non-parents are
discriminated against. What becomes important is what facts are presented and
how they will be interpreted. In fact,
lower income and some middle-class parents indeed are very much beleaguered,
and lower income singles and non-parents are quite a bit vulnerable to
discrimination. However, the tone of the writing is often a bit strident,
overbearing and adversarial, sometimes bordering on hysteria. Hewlett/West are certainly correct about many of their
basic observations. Particularly
important is their observation about the stress that the “Darwinian
workplace” (particularly as it developed in the 1980’s [when employers tended
to take out the pressure put on them by investors on their associates,
demanding that they compete with each other as individuals to keep their jobs
and remain “indispensable”), to subside during the 90’s) has placed on some
families. A good question indeed is, with the gains in productivity why can’t
we all enjoy a shorter workweek and time for families or personal pursuits?
(The answer used to have to do with the cost of benefits with more employees,
but that is turning around as consultants now cost more a lot of times than
employees). It is well to point out
that parenting is not a simple “economic investment” and that the cultural
distractions (entertainment violence) can provide a big challenge to the most well-intended parents. The authors do not get into the details as
to how the workplace actually works as much as they could, nor do they go
into some areas like Internet censorship issues as much as I would have
expected. The authors do make an interesting point about African-American
families, that the credibility of the male provider role in the black family
was wiped out by slavery (the film Amistad)
in the 19th Century; the CNN “Millennium” series has pointed out
that slavery was a critical, if immoral, foundation for capitalism throughout
all of the Americas for over two centuries and was brought to colonial
Virginia almost by accident! . Their solutions are mostly rather routine,
but some are noteworthy. For example,
longer school days, and allowing parent to cast votes for their children,
increasing the power of parents as a voting block—which will raise the issue
as to whether parents would use “democracy” to force non-parents to subsidize
their “chosen” responsibilities. But most important is their demand for
legally mandated or driven paid paternal leave, such as is practiced in Then the question is: who pays for these privileges and benefits
for parents? Logically, people who don’t have children. Should parents have the legal right (beyond
what they already have) to force others to subsidize their choices to become
parents? If so, it seems at least that
they forfeit some control over their own child-rearing—if after all children
are a community future resource. So
will parents want this right?
According to the authors’ surveys, apparently many of them do. But
many parents aren’t exactly conscious of their differential “choice”; they
view family and parenting as so fundamental to fitting in that everybody must
eventually do it. Except that there is a caveat. The underlying theme—despite the authors’
criticism of some of the excesses of modern culture and their reiteration of
George Gilder’s ideas about marriage—is that most of the solutions are
governmental and federal (they overlook that the evils of foster care are
driven by government). Okay, then,
let’s pay for all of these parental privileges by soaking the rich. Let’s
take it out of corporate profits, out of CEO stock options and
parachutes. Then nobody gets
hurt. But in a technology-driven, more individualistic society
this “socialistic” buffer sounds less convincing. Many “average joe’s”
now own stocks and pay attention to corporate profits, especially as they
approach retirement age. Furthermore, if government is going to force private
employers to pay salaries to parents for extended periods when they are not
working, inevitably some of the money—and time (often unpaid overtime or
on-call time) is going to come from the childless. The authors say rather little about gays, although it
seems that the authors view gays as intrinsically different, mathemtacially and socially small in importance, and not
“part of the problem.” Gay marriage is
not addressed, although I rather speculate that the authors might favor
adoption by stable gay couples, considering the dire collective need for more
parents. A social system that heavily favors parents and penalizes the
unattached might not be noticed much by younger gays and other singles
(except maybe those with large student loans) but could gradually become very
difficult for older gays. One also ponders whether government need not mandate what amounts to the “family wage,” but merely permit it. Employers could intentionally favor “families with children” or employees with any dependents (such as elderly parents) if they announced their policies openly, or they could allow small work self-managed teams to work out some of these problems on their own. Putting this book together with Elinor
Bukett’s The Baby Boon, with my
own experiences and with a lot of other reading, I’d proffer the notion that
maybe our social system really should expect adults, periodically if not
continuously, to demonstrate that they can take care of others besides
themselves (be it children, parents, lovers, or other committed volunteerism). Maybe we can develop a culture where
employers and other powerful institutions expect this. What we do have is a culture where many
people are unaware of the different values of others with whom they interact,
with respect to the most basic choices and responsibilities that free people
make and take. Ultimately, common
decency and professionalism will require that people without obligations to
others sometimes yield to facilitate the needs of people with dependents, but
that list would include elderly parents of other needy persons as well as
children; and this is a process or differentiation that government should
stay away from. On |
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Related Reviews: Burkett, The Baby Boon |
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