In Loco Parentis (Reno's "family values" for Floridians?)

Vol. 10, No. 16
August 8, 1994

In Loco Parentis
by William Norman Grigg

G.K. Chesterton wrote, "The ideal for which the family stands is liberty. It is the only institution that is at once necessary and voluntary. It is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state, and more naturally than the state."

For this reason, dictators and despots of all varieties have sought throughout history to corrupt the conventional family, appropriate its functions, and remove the individual from the shelter of the home. Accordingly, those concerned about individual liberty should become suspicious whenever they hear a politician or bureaucrat refer to "our" children.

Children of the "Republic"

The concept that the state should control the development of children arguably began with Plato, who made the government of his totalitarian "republic" the custodian of "its" children. The Jacobin government of revolutionary France, which sought to create a totalitarian "republic,, systematically subverted family connections. Bertrand Barere, a member of the revolutionary Committee on Public Safety, taught that the "principles that ought to guide parents are that children belong to the general family, to the republic, before they belong to particular families ... the spirit of private families must disappear when the great family calls .... You are born for the republic and not for the pride and despotism of families."

The Soviet revolution, a lineal descendant of the French Revolution, trafficked in nearly identical concepts. A.S. Makarenko. the Stalin-era family theorist who became known as the "Dr. Spock of the socialist world," wrote in the Handbook for Soviet Families that the state had "handed over a certain measure of social authority" to individual families. According to Makarenko, "[The Soviet] family is not a closed-in, collective body, like the bourgeois family. It is an organic part of Soviet society, and every attempt it makes to build up its own experience independently of the moral demands of society is bound to result in a disproportion, discordant as an alarm bell."

Unfortunately, the drive to collectivize the American family proceeds with little opposition. As the November 14, 1993 New York Times reported, "Bit by bit, the country's urge for collective child-rearing is becoming more visible." According to Times reporter Ronald Smothers, embattled parents are desperate for any help they can find: "Feeling thwarted in trying to rear their children and enforce standards of behavior that at one time seemed clear and universal, parents are increasingly reaching out for help and welcoming any help that is volunteered. Many appear willing to subcontract a portion of their role to government, schools and whatever communal vestiges remain in a mobile and complex society."

Many analysts ascribe these developments to the supposedly inexorable laws of social development. However, as the late historian Christopher Lasch observed, "The family did not simply evolve in response to social and economic influences; it was deliberately transformed by the intervention of planners and policy makers [who] sought to remove children from the influence of their families ... and to place them under the benign influence of the state and school."

On April 11th, the Carnegie Corporation published Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children, a report calling for greater government involvement in the lives of children in the years from birth to age three. That report was timed to generate support for a substantial expansion of the Head Start program; it has also achieved quasi-scriptural status for those who support even more extensive regulation of the family by the state. But the evidence is conclusive that government entanglement in family affairs has created or abetted the majority of the problems that provide fodder for think-tank policy wonks.

Cultivated Destruction

Government can create neither wealth nor liberty, but it has an unparalleled ability to create work for itself. Nothing illustrates this fact better than the welfare state's effect upon the family. Allan Carlson of the Rockford Institute has written, "The rise of the welfare state can be written as the steady transfer of the dependency function from the family to the state; from persons tied by blood, marriage or adoption to persons tied to public employees." Carlson has pointed out that what he calls "the collapse of family structure" in America began in earnest in 1965 -- about the same time that the "Great Society" welfare state was inaugurated.

However, by the time the Great Society began, Social Security -- arguably the most disruptive social program ever devised -- was well entrenched. By making the state the broker of social insurance, Social Security has disrupted the bonds between generations and sewn discord between them. As family therapist Michael Bettinger observes, "in the 'old' days, before Social Security, people had to rely on others more than they do today .... If people did not build and maintain relationships with family and friends, they might find themselves in need of help, but there would be no one there to help them. People could not easily write off their families after a minor dispute." However, "Most of this changed with introduction of Social Security." According to Bettinger, Social Security has abetted family disruption: "As a family therapist, I have seen too many individuals cut off from their families for the slimmest of reasons .... They know when they get old or ill, Social Security will take care of them. They believe they do not need each other."

The tax burden created, in large measure, by Social Security and various welfare state "entitlement" programs has been sorely felt by families. In 1950, a family of four paid about two percent of its adjusted gross income in federal income tax; in 1993, a similar family paid about 24 percent. Between 1946 and 1993, the standard deduction for children increased from $600 to $2,500; however, to keep pace with inflation, that deduction should have been at least $7,800. Accordingly, every family with a combined household income of less than $32,000 should have been relieved entirely of payroll or income taxes.

The state's appropriation of family functions creates a feedback loop. "Entitlement" programs consume tax dollars from families; the increased tax burden forces both parents into the work force; parental absence cultivates new social problems -- resulting in a new "need" for entitlement programs. In this fashion, families become knitted to the government in a state of enervating dependency.

The Kansas Case

Some advocates of the traditional family have sought to protect parental authority through the passage of state-level "parental rights" amendments. Pro-family activists in Kansas recently proposed the following amendment to their state constitution: "Parents shall retain the fundamental right to exercise primary control over the care and upbringing of their children." After being modified to include "the state's traditional responsibility to protect the health, safety and welfare of children," the measure was defeated by the state legislature.

Jim McDavitt, director of the Kansas Education Watch (KEW) network, laments, "With the defeat of the Parental Rights Amendment on March 29th, every parent in Kansas was told by over half the legislators that they are not the primary decision makers in the lives of their children. They are, however, as a group at large, considered capable and likely of criminal child abuse." Recalled McDavitt, "During the floor debate, House members, both Republican and Democrat, described how giving parents primary control would result in wholesale child abuse and injury to the children."

Opposition to the parental rights amendment included State Representative Denise Everhart, who declared, "I have a thousand stories of child abuse that I will recite on the House floor one at a time if I have to in order to keep this amendment from passing." But none of the measure's critics was more demagogic than State Representative Rochell Chronister, who declared that "every time I see this amendment, I cannot help but think of those children that were burned alive by David Koresh in Waco, Texas." (More perceptive people understand that the Waco Massacre illustrates the dangers of government involvement in child "protection" issues.) This piece of rhetorical dishonesty was seized upon by the measure's critics, who repeatedly referred to the proposed amendment as the "David Koresh amendment."

Supporters of the parental rights measure were not acting out of whimsical or alarmist impulses; rather, they were reacting to an ominous expansion of the state government's power over individual families. In an August 20, 1991 story bearing the headline "Bigger State Role Proposed in Children's Lives," the Wichita Eagle reported, "Kansas must change its tradition of leaving the responsibility of rearing children strictly to parents if its youth are to be adequately prepared for life, members of a legislative student committee were told...." A measure introduced in the state legislature in 1992 (House Bill 3113) stated: "The legislature hereby declares that the state is ultimately responsible for meeting the educational, health, mental health, and welfare needs for every child and every adolescent in the state."

Pro-family activists in Kansas fear that the defeat of the parental rights amendment may set the stage for a new escalation in the war upon the family. KEW's McDavitt reports that "during the testimony in the House Judiciary hearing one conferee testified about a book by Hugh LaFollette entitled Licensing Parents ... and its argument that parents should not be allowed to parent unless they have been fully licensed by the state."

Ready to Act

The readiness of "child protection" authorities to pounce upon "abusive" parents was recently illustrated by an incident in Woodstock, Georgia. A grocery store employee saw 35-year-old Lynn Kivi discipline her nine-year-old son after the youngster misbehaved. The employee called the police, who quickly arrived and asked the boy if his mother had ever hit him before. The child guilelessly replied, "I get smacked when I am bad." Mrs. Kivi also admitted to police that she had struck the child. The police slapped handcuffs on the mother and took her to jail. At the time of this writing, Mrs. Kivi is free on $22,050 ball, but she faces a charge of "cruelty to children" -- and a possible prison term of 20 years -- for the "crime" of disciplining her own child. But the only cruelty inflicted upon the boy resulted from the state's seizure of his mother. Since his mother's arrest, the child has been tormented by nightmares in which he is permanently separated from his parents.

Phillip Jenkins of the Administration of Justice Department at Pennsylvania State University points out that "child abuse cases have served as a massive bridgehead for the notion of the 'objective expert,' the neutral professional who is seeking to protect the child and the community in the face of all the obstacles posed by outmoded legalism." The infiltration of such "experts" into the lives of families is a dominant objective of federal educational and social policies.

Federal "Solutions"

Attorney General Janet Reno, who was described by Florida Senator Bob Graham as "part crime fighter, part social worker," insists that because of the social failures that have been abetted by statist social policies -- or summoned into existence by deliberate design -children should be considered within the federal government's primary jurisdiction: "... when we talk about access to legal services, our traditional response has been to say parents will represent their children's interests. [But] there are too many children in America for whom the fabric of society has literally fallen away and have no one to speak out and to advocate for them. And we have a great challenge to devise a system that can do that."

In Janet Reno:Doing the Right Thing, reporter Paul Anderson writes: "Reno's agenda for children is ambitious, to say the least: Every pregnant woman should have prenatal care .... Every child should be immunized. Every child age zero to three should have 'either proper parental supervision' or 'safe, good, constructive, thoughtful 'educare' that blends into Head Start .... From kindergarten through high school, students should be offered creative activities in the afternoons: computer instruction, art, music, and drama as well as athletics."

According to Reno, "We" -- meaning the federal government -- "[have] got to make sure that parents are old enough, wise enough, and financially able enough to take care of their children, and that they are taught parenting skills that enable them to be responsible parents." Of course, "parenting skills" were quite effectively taught long before the federal government was devised. Like the Carnegie Foundation, Janet Reno insists that the government must especially focus its efforts on children "in the critical years between birth and age three" -- essentially that the state must take over the basic task of molding early childhood habits and attitudes.

According to the April 4th issue of U.S. News and World Report, Janet Reno's Justice Department has endorsed "federal backing for 'home visitation,' citing the example of Hawaii, which encourages parents in families where authorities suspect a risk of child abuse to allow outside counsellors into their homes as early as during pregnancy." The Hawaiian program so warmly endorsed by the Justice Department, which is entitled "Healthy Start," was the subject of a two-segment "American Agenda" profile on ABC television in March 1993. According to ABC reporter Rebecca Chase, "Every time a baby is born [in Hawaii], workers screen the mother's chart, looking for signs that families are under stress .... If they find warning signs, they interview the parents to determine what kind of support system is in place [and] whether there is a family history of abuse. Parents who seem under stress are offered help." For those who accept the "help," weekly visits from Healthy Start workers begin.

Although the program was sold as a solution for the problems of low-income families, over 50 percent of Hawaiian families with young children are now enrolled in Healthy Start. Furthermore, despite the program's putative emphasis on early childhood development, state supervision does not end after infancy. According to Chase, "Home visits continue as necessary as the baby grows up and the problems change." Furthermore, the "services" provided extend to things other than child abuse prevention: "The program is also proving to be an effective way to link families with other services -- birth control, medical care, and preschool, for example."

Another Hawaiian program, "Open Doors," offers a state subsidy to parents and advice regarding the choice of child care programs. According to Chase, "Ultimately, Hawaii's goal is to provide not just day care, but early education to all children to make sure they are ready to learn when they start school." The ABC program displayed a couple who endorsed the program: "We're really confident and at peace with them being there [in state-administered child care centers] .... We can just do our jobs and do it well, instead of stressing out and worrying what's happening to them." The implicit message is that all American parents should be able to surrender their children to the state with similar equanimity.

Children "At Risk"

A measure before the California legislature would create a similar program in that state. The bill, AB 3345, would allocate federal grant money for the creation of "neonatal and early childhood home-based prevention services for families at risk of child abuse and neglect."

The problem with this concept, according to Roy M. Hanson of the California Child and Family Protection Association, is that "There is no legal statutory definition of 'at risk.' Use of the term 'at risk' amounts to a blank check for intervention in the home by the therapeutic state." As a result, observes Hanson, "You can be a good and innocent mother of several children with no history of abuse or crime and still be considered at risk of being an abuser under this program."

The assumption that all families are "at risk" of child abuse is confirmed by Barbara F. Meltz of the Boston Globe. Summarizing the perspectives of "the large network of professionals who deal with child abuse," Meltz urges that parents should enroll in "parent education" courses before the birth of their child. Notes Meltz, "these programs help only parents who can be identified as being at risk. The truth, experts say, is that anyone is capable of hurting their child." This would seem to simplify the task of identifying "at risk" parents: apparently all parents are "at risk."

The Goals 2000 Act represents a profound enrichment of the idea that parents are little more than administrative agents of the state. According to a summary of the act, "every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children." When read with sobriety, this is an implicit claim that it is the state -- not the parents -- which has primary responsibility for the "social, emotional, and academic growth of children"; through the program, the state will condescend to permit parents a larger role, but that role must be compatible with the state's designs. To help dictate those designs to parents, Title IV of Goals 2000 will create "Parent Information and Resource Centers" which will "help provide parents with knowledge and skills needed to participate effectively in their child's education."

Under Goals 2000, parents will have to create the proper environment of "readiness to learn" as that environment is defined by a National Education Goals Panel. As an Education Department backgrounder points out, "Experts differ on just what constitutes 'readiness,' so communities need to consider what aspects are most important to them and then design a strategy that fits their needs." Once again, the locus of control would be removed from the home and assigned to "experts" who would act in the name of "community needs."

Redefining Family

Perhaps the most effective means to collectivize the family is to hasten its destruction through social re-definition. Every successful society has been predicated upon the conventional "nuclear" family, which is organized around a man and a woman who are joined in legal wedlock. However, powerful interests seek to institutionalize "alternative" models of the family.

The UN's International Year of the Family (IYF) is, among other disreputable things, a campaign to redefine the family. According to an IYF profile published in the March 1994 UN Chronicle, "... the nuclear family itself is changing. Non-traditional family types are becoming more common, such as cohabitation, same-gender relationships, [and] single-parent families...." Michael Stewart, the Utah official who presides over the IYF-linked "Patron Cities" program, observes that IYF materials avoid a standard definition of the family because "that definition is changing."

On April 15th, the Cleveland-based Federation for Community Planning held an IYF-related conference entitled "Families: Redefining, Reinforcing and Revitalizing." According to the event's prospectus, "We [the event's planning committee] began by discussing 'the family.' We came to realize, though, that no one 'family' structure typifies today's society. Rather, today's families come in a vast array of shapes, sizes and forms. As a result, the [Federation] recognizes the definition prepared by Family Service America: 'A family consists of two people, whether living together or apart, related by blood, marriage, or commitment to care for one another.'" By this definition, a "family" might consist of nearly any imaginable combination of people. An even more radical definition comes from a booklet prepared by the Utah Center for Families in Education: "Let's be clear about the meaning of 'family.' It means a child and an adult responsible for that child's upbringing." Under this formula, a "same-sex couple" given custody of a child would be considered a "family," as would a dyad composed of a child and his state-appointed custodian.

In a speech given at the University of Chicago on November 15, 1991, Donna Shalala -- who now presides over the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency which dwarfs the Pentagon -- predicted the society that would greet "Renata," a fictional four-year-old kindergarten student, in 2004: "Renata doesn't know any moms who don't work, but she knows lots of moms who are single. She knows some children who only live with their duds, and children who have two duds, or live with their mothers and their grandmothers. In her school books, there are lots of different kinds of friends and families...."

After school, Renata would not go home, but rather to a publicly funded day care center where she and her fellow inmates would be further weaned from "patriarchal" culture by playing gender-neutral games. According to Shalala, Renata is a true World Citizen -- she "will think of herself as part of the world -- not just her town or the United States."

Shalala told her audience that the world she envisioned would not come into existence by accident, but rather "because we made it our top priority in our communities and in Congress." Americans devoted to the traditional family -- and the liberties it represents -- had best become aggressive in the defense of their priorities.

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