Posted on 11/30/2004 2:28:45 PM PST by Lorianne
Mary Eberstadt’s Home Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs. and Other Parent Substitutes is a culture-changing book. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to The Economist: “Eberstadt’s passionate attack on the damage caused by the absence of parents suggests that we may be approaching some sort of turning point in social attitudes, where assumptions about family life and maternal employment start to change. It has happened before — it could happen again.”
Rich Lowry has already done a great job of recounting some of the core claims of Home Alone America. I want to talk about what makes this book so powerful — over and above its important arguments about day care, behavioral drugs, teen sex, specialty boarding schools, etc.
From the very first page of the book, we’re in a different world. Eberstadt begins with a gentle pledge to break our social taboo on attending to the effects of working motherhood on children. And Eberstadt keeps her promise — so much so that she needs to create a new word, “separationist,” for a certain kind of feminist. (The London Times is now touting Eberstadt’s “separationist” coinage as the latest hot buzzword.) Instead of talking about “feminism,” which gets us debating how to balance the interests of women against the interests of men, Eberstadt talks about “separationism,” which gets us debating how to balance the interests of children and adults. What we usually call “divorce,” Eberstadt calls “the absent father problem.” Eberstadt’s language sends a powerful message: It’s not about adults. It’s about what separates or unites adults and children, and what that means for them both
NO REACTIONARY Not that Eberstadt is calling for a return for the ‘50s. Eberstadt doesn’t demand a ban on divorce, nor does she call on women to stop working outside the home. But Eberstadt does ask us to balance the needs of parents and children in a fundamentally new way. Decisions about divorce and working motherhood can only be made by individual parents. But to strike the right balance between the needs of children and adults, parents need to break the taboo set up by “separationist” feminists — the taboo on looking at the real costs and consequences of parent-child separation.
When Eberstadt considers our current way of balancing work and family, she doesn’t see a well-established and smoothly functioning social system. Instead she sees an “ongoing, massive, and historically unprecedented experiment in family-child separation.” An unresolved “experiment” — that’s how Eberstadt understands our society’s way of rearing its children. And she’s right. We’ve barely begun to look at the real effects of the profound social changes that followed in the wake of the ‘60s. That’s why Home Alone America is not another book about the stresses and trials of working mothers or divorced parents. Above all, Home Alone America is a book about children.
RAISING THE MORAL BAR A number of thoughtful observers have pointed out that, for all our wealth and technology, Americans don’t seem to be any happier nowadays than we were in the past. Eberstadt thinks she knows why. Life is better for American adults, who are financially, legally, and morally freer than they’ve ever been. But life is not better for American children, says Eberstadt, “no matter how much more pocket money they have for the vending machines, and no matter how nice it is that Dad’s new wife gave them their own weekend bedroom in his new place.” In fact, it’s actually wealthier children who are more likely to labor under some of the disabilities of our new family dispensation. According to Eberstadt, well-to-do children come home more often to neighborhoods so emptied of adults (and therefore unsafe for outdoor play) that they simply throw the deadbolt and “get no exercise more strenuous than walking from the video game to the refrigerator.”
Eberstadt’s chapter on day care is a great example of what makes this book so interesting. While Eberstadt does bring some important new information to bear on the day-care debate (check out her discussion of biting), the real originality lies in her point of view. For example, even the most “separationist” feminists concede that children in day care are more likely to get sick. The interesting thing is the difference between what the separationists and Eberstadt do with that fact.
Eberstadt lays out the “creepy” rationalizations given by Susan Faludi and her colleagues for the high rate of day-care-borne infections: “[Children] soon build up immunities”; “they’re hardier when they are older.” Then Eberstadt lowers the boom: “Now step back from this discussion for a moment and ask yourself: If we were talking about anything but day care here, would anyone be caught cheering for the idea that some little children get sick twice as often as others?”
Eberstadt’s discussion of day care manages to shift the moral stakes of the debate. She turns the issue away from the long-term effects of day care and onto the immediate unhappiness that many children suffer when put in day care for too long. Feminists who champion the benefits of parent-child separation have set the moral bar far too low. Essentially, says Eberstadt, the feminist position amounts to: “If it doesn’t lead to Columbine, bring it on.” Eberstadt wants to raise that moral bar.
WHO’S PROBLEM? Consider the way Eberstadt transforms the work of Harvard professor Jody Heymann. Writing from the adult point of view, Heymann talks about how difficult it is for parents to balance the intense demands of work and child-rearing. Sometimes, when it’s impossible to miss a day of work, even a child with a fever has to be deposited in day care (against the rules). Concentrating on the child’s point of view, Eberstadt stresses that this not only spreads disease, but prevents day-care workers saddled with a sick child from attending to the well ones. Whereas Heymann calls for more and better government-funded day care, Eberstadt shows that this is unlikely to solve the underlying problem.
But the real question is, Who’s problem are we talking about? Up until now, public discussion of issues like day care has been dominated by feminist journalists and academics who take their own career decisions for granted and call on society to make their lives easier: How can I be equal to a man if society won’t give me better day care? Eberstadt strides into this situation and asks a totally different series of questions: Are children any happier in day care than they are with their mothers? If not, should that effect a woman’s career decisions? Are unhappy children who bite and get aggressive or ill in day care growing tougher, stronger, and more ruggedly individualist, or is it we adults who are being coarsened to needs of our children? Although I’m inclined to believe the latter, the important point is that until now, the choice between these two points of view hasn’t even been posed. The separationists who’ve controlled the public debate up to now have excluded Eberstadt’s sort of questions altogether. That’s why this book is so impressive and important. Over and above the statistical issues, on just about every page, Eberstadt breaks a taboo, shifts a perspective, and forces us to look at the lives of children in new and more vivid ways.
DEFINING DEVIANCY One of the cleverest reversals in the book comes in the chapter on children’s mental health. Increasingly, we’re medicating children for mental illnesses that barely existed in the past. Take “separation anxiety disorder” (SAD), defined as “developmentally inappropriate and excessive anxiety concerning separation from home or from those to whom the individual is attached.” This syndrome is now said to affect about 10 percent of the nation’s children. One of its symptoms is “refusal to attend classes or difficulty remaining in school for an entire day” — in other words, what used to be called “truancy.”
Are 10 percent of the nation’s children really in need of treatment for SAD, or are most of these children actually behaving more normally than mothers who have little trouble parting from their children for most of the day? Is it surprising that children get SAD in the absence of their parents? As Eberstadt suggests, maybe we need to define a whole new range of disorders: “There is no mental disorder...called, say, preoccupied parent disorder, to pathologize a mother or father too distracted to read Winnie the Pooh for the fourth time or to stay up on Saturday night waiting for a teenager to come home from the movies. Nor will one find divorced second-family father disorder, even though the latter might explain what we could call the ‘developmentally inappropriate’ behaviors of certain fathers, such as failure to pay child support or to show up for certain important events. There is also nothing...like separation non-anxiety disorder to pathologize parents who can separate for long stretches from their children without a pang.”
TOWARD A NEW SOCIAL CONSENSUS Despite her playfully brilliant reversal of our questionable tendency to pathologize children who miss their parents, Eberstadt does not in the end reverse the pathological finger-pointing. Eberstadt clearly acknowledges that some mothers have no choice but to work and that some marriages suffer from gross abuse. She knows that the pressures and constraints on parents today are many, and often severe. Yet Eberstadt makes a passionate and persuasive case that, when it comes to the welfare of children, we have fallen out of balance. We may not want or need to return to the ‘50s, but that cannot and should not mean that anything goes. The traditional family is not infinitely flexible, and changes do have consequences. Despite its real benefits, our new-found individualism has been pushed too far. That’s because we have taken our eyes off — or because separationist ideologues have forcibly shifted our eyes away from — the consequences of our actions for our children.
So what does Eberstadt want? Quite simply, she wants a change of heart — a new social consensus: “It would be better for both children and adults if more American parents were with their kids more of the time....it would be better if more mothers with a genuine choice in the matter did stay home and/or work part-time rather than full time and if more parents entertaining separation or divorce did stay together for the sake of the kids.” This new consensus may be difficult to achieve. Yet it is easy to understand, and it would not demand a wholesale reversion to the pre-‘60s era.
I’ve tried to give just a taste of what Home Alone America has to offer. The battle will rage over the statistics, the causal arrows, and such. But the power and originality of this book go way beyond all that. Its strength comes out on every page, as Eberstadt casts aside orthodoxies and forces us to look at ourselves and our children with new eyes. (And I haven’t even talked about the music chapter, my favorite.) I can’t pretend neutrality, since I was privileged to see Home Alone America in manuscript, and am thanked by the author for my comments. I’m honored by that mention, because I agree with The Economist that this book has the potential to change the way our society thinks about the family. In the same way we now look back to the “Dan Quayle Was Right” article as a transformative moment in our family debates, we may someday look back on the publication of Home Alone America. We’ll be the richer for it if we do — as you will be if you read this wonderful book.
But let's face it, there is a heck of a lot more stuff out there to buy than 50 years ago. Back then houses were smaller, you didn't necessarily need a car, the extent of a home entertainment system was a radio. You could still live pretty cheaply if you want to live like you did 50 years ago, but people aren't going to knock down the door to do that.
You are right. I wasted all our money on that lavish country club we joined.
Or it must be all the manicures and facials I get every week.
Or it must be the monthly spa visits.
Who are you to make assumptions about how we spend our money? No we do not own an entertainment center. No we do not own a stereo. Our newest car is a 1991 plymouth bought used.
I had our house appraised last month--a 4br, 2 full bath, eat in kitchen, formal dining, updates too numerous to name, on a "postage stamp" property. $109,000. In other Lansing neighborhoods, my house would be valued at $150,000 or more.
...and you're starting to sound like some kinda nutcase which is too bad--I agreed with much of what you stated earlier in the thread. Newsflash: There is no gene for being an American. If there is a gene which causes xenophobia, my friend, I think you may posess it.
I think the person who first used the phrase is using an imprecise rhetorical flourish.
Nevertheless, Mitochondrial DNA markers can be used to determine everyones ancestory. Therefore, the amalgamated group I mentioned before will show a common thread of ancestory from the relatively small number of pre-1880 (and even more so pre-1800) immigrants to this country.
What exactly is your implication, Herm? Did these kids wander away from home one day and find themselves in an orphanage? Isn't it absolutely more likely that the genetic donors of these children left their kids in an orphanage?
As for Jolie...for someone so high-profile and with so much money, I think she would set a better example by adopting a child here in America. She can well afford a team of lawyers to handle the red tape--something which most Americans seeking to adopt cannot afford to do. However, in her defense, I certainly do not recall reading about how she snuck into some poor, unsuspecting villager's hut one night and swiped a couple of kids.
You should strongly consider more reasonably priced real estate beyond Worcester or in New Hampshire. Sacrificing family size for high priced real estate simply isn't worth it.
Nonsense. America is different from a nation like Germany. There is no ethnic component to being American. A Turk living in Germany cannot really claim German identity because "Germanness" involves both an ethnic and culutral component.
Granted, this country (or, at least, large chunks of it) were founded by people of Northern European extraction. However, there have been successive waves of immigration to this country from places that the Founding Fathers would not have considered as being compatible with "Americanness" (such as Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe). The idea that Anglo-Saxon genes are dominant in this country today is not accurate.
Genetics is not something one can change, but culture is. That is why the US was able to attract and assimilate milions on non Anglo-Saxon immigrants whereas a country like Japan could not attract or assimilate millions of non-Japanese: once a person accepts American culture, they ARE an American.
The Boston Brahmin domination and definition of this country has passed.
A child raised by Americans and assimilated into American culture IS as American as one born to an Anglo-Saxon like John Kerry.
BFD! Not a single one of my ancestors set foot on North American soil before 1905--most of them came over in the 1920s. Guess I'm not an American, right?
Being an American--claiming to have allegiance to ANY nation, for that matter--has nothing to do with genetics. Nada, zip, zilch, zero. Ideals, baby. I am an American because I would fight for my country and I would die for my country. Being born here just means I can run for President.
I have to disagree with that statement. Some nations clearly have an ethnic aspect to their definition. You could live in Japan for generations and still not be considered Japanese, whereas Japanese immigrants to this country can become Americans as soon as they adopt this country's ideals.
So your advice is to close my business, move my family further away from the rest of the family, have my wife quite her job...or I can start driving about 2 hours one-way to my business so I can see my new baby for about an hour a day. Sounds like a great plan to me. I just don't know what I was thinking...
Many of us whose families were here before those immigrant waves you mention subsequently reject this reasoning. We believe that the original American settlers are the definition of the American nation, and that our ancestors not only formed this nation, but created this country to which others subsequently immigrated. We therefore reject the idea that "we are a nation of immigrants" because our ancestors did not immigrate to a new country - they moved from one part of the Empire to another, no differently than if they had moved from London to Glasgow or Belfast.
But more fundementally, a nation by definition is people of common descent. If America is not a nation like Germany or Spain, then American is not a nation at all. Just a land with many different subnations. You are trying to redefine words.
Granted, this country (or, at least, large chunks of it) were founded by people of Northern European extraction. However, there have been successive waves of immigration to this country from places that the Founding Fathers would not have considered as being compatible with "Americanness" (such as Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe). The idea that Anglo-Saxon genes are dominant in this country today is not accurate.
The first immigration law from 1789 granted citizenship only to "free white persons". Most states required active citizens to be professed Christians or at least deists. Various federal court cases over this resolved that Indians from the subcontinent are not white and could not become citizens, while Egyptian, Syrian and Lebanese Christians are. So the Founders appeared to have every intention that other Europeans could migrate here and become citizens. Even American Indians were not granted citizaenship until 1924. The disabilities on non-white foreigners becoming citizens were not removed until 1952, IIRC, from the immigration reforms in the McCarran Act.
As to Anglo-Sexon dominance, that is still so. The majority of people in the US continue to report to the Census as being of ancestory coming from the original settlers of the US - from the British Isles, from Germany and Holland, from France, and from Scandanavia. The three largest groups are the Germans, English, and Irish. If you also include the many Americans who are Black or Native Indians, you have the overwhelming majority of inhabitants of the US. Asians and South/Eastern Europeans - the two groups of "new immigrants" are a small fraction of the US population - 15% would be pushing it.
America has had 3 Irish presidents (Buchanan, Kennedy, and Reagan), 4 German/Dutch presidents (Roosevelt, Hoover, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower) and 36 English presidents (everyone else).
The vast majority of current politicians and movers and shakers belong to those three groups and the blacks. Wake me up in 100 years when someone from outside those groups actually has a chance.
You are confusing citizenship with nationality. Try using a dictionary to understand the definitions of words.
Yes.
Why bother having children if you won't be raising them? You are proposing having another person raise your children for you so you can pay for an expensive house. Don't you see a problem there?
**I lost my cool for an instance and retorted that she should think about the possibility of spending her eternity celebrating all her vacation's in a very hot environment**
bwaaahaha
I notice from your profile page that you are Catholic. Up until very recently, Catholics in this country were not considered "true" Americans, especially the Irish and Italians. It seems that the definition of who can be a "true" American has been malleable through history. Certainly, the idea that Blacks were true Americans would have been laughable up until very recently.
We therefore reject the idea that "we are a nation of immigrants" because our ancestors did not immigrate to a new country - they moved from one part of the Empire to another
Just to give you one example, over 40% of Americans have an ancestor who immigrated through Ellis Island alone. To claim that America is not a nation of immigrants is to defy reality.
But more fundementally, a nation by definition is people of common descent. If America is not a nation like Germany or Spain, then American is not a nation at all. Just a land with many different subnations. You are trying to redefine words.
You're using one possible definition, but another defintion, according to Webster's, is "a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government; a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status." America fits either of those definitions quite well.
As to Anglo-Sexon dominance, that is still so. The majority of people in the US continue to report to the Census as being of ancestory coming from the original settlers of the US - from the British Isles, from Germany and Holland, from France, and from Scandanavia. The three largest groups are the Germans, English, and Irish.
Right there, your definition is too broad. You cannot honestly claim that the Irish would have been considered "real" Americans up until very recently. You pretty much have to exclude anyone who is of Irish (34 million), Italian (20 million), Hispanic (13% or so), Black (12%), Native (1.5%), Asian (1.2%), Jewish (2%), Muslim (1%) from the definition. That's nearly 50% of the country.
There is more than one definition of "nation."
Maybe it's because these kids were largely ignored by their parents when they were growing up, became depressed, parents again ignored them by medicating them, and the kids took things into their own hands, however extreme. (This is not saying parents who work ignore their kids.)
It's going to take a lot less than that for Hispanics to become dominant in this country....
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