A Paradigm Shift in Parenting

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.

Dear Hermann,

The problem in the Washington, DC area is that even prices in minority neighborhoods are increasing rapidly, especially as neighborhood after neighborhood becomes "gentrified."

I'm currently dealing with the problem from sort of the opposite end of things. My mother died last year, and my father has a progressive degenerative illness. I would like for him to move near me so that in the years he has left, we could assist him.

I live in Anne Arundel County, under Baltimore, to the east of Washington. Although there have always been zip codes that were quite expensive, large parts of the county for many years offered fairly affordable housing. Five years ago, I could have gotten my father into a comfortable 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house (in anticipation of some day perhaps having to have live-in assistance) for around $100,000 in the southern part of the county.

A quick check of realtor.com reveals that out of over 1300 listings in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, there are precisely 9 houses with at least two bedrooms and two baths selling for under $200,000, the least of these being $170,000.

These are all in the Glen Burnie area. The neighborhoods (I'm familiar with the neighborhoods listed) are, frankly, undesirable.

There is not a single home in the southern part of the county with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths for under $200,000. The least expensive house meeting these relatively-basic criteria is listed at $229,000.

I could ask my father to live in a rowhouse in Baltimore, but Baltimore city has become a rather undesirable place to live, partly as a result of former mayor Kurt Schmoke all but legalizing the drug trade.

As for Washington, DC, proper, out of a couple of thousand homes listed, there are precisely 16 properties listed with this basic description for sale for $100,000 or less right now. Everyone of them is in one of three bad neighborhoods.

There are seven more, all, again, in very bad neighborhoods, between $100,000 and $150,000.

Between $150,000 and $200,000, there are another 14 homes with these criteria. The only one not in the worst part of the city is in Northeast, in an iffy, if not terrible neighborhood, going for $200,000.

That's it.

In neighboring Prince Georges County (land of high taxes and execrable services, high crime and low amenities), we have the following: $100,000 or under, two properties - a condo in a bad area, and a house in a worse area; $100,000 - $150,000, 24 properties, nearly all either in bad neighborhoods or condos.

As I look above $150,000, there are some older, small homes in satisfactory neighborhoods. However, property taxes for a house sold at $175,000 will run over $3000 per year in Prince Georges County, thus significantly affecting affordability.

I live near Bowie, MD, which going back only three or four years, was a very pleasant, very affordable community. A nice 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home could be had for $150,000, or even a little less, and that's with a nice 1/5 acre lot. It's still a pretty nice place to live, but the same house is now commanding $250,000 - $300,000. It's become insane.

Anyway, if you don't want to live in a bad neighborhood, and require 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, you're pretty much looking at $200,000 to have much of any selection, even in the least expensive parts of the inner Washington region. I'm sure if you want to live in Carroll County or Mannassas, there will be a modestly better selection of houses under $200,000.

My father is fortunate in that he could afford to spend $200,000 or more, as he own his home in Florida free and clear. But a $200,000 house, considering taxes and insurance, will require an income of about $65,000. This is certainly achievable for many folks with professional positions, but I know lots of folks who go to my church where the husband doesn't make $65,000.

sitetest

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.

That's another way of looking at or saying the point I was trying to make.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but all those antidepressants called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, SSRIs, such as Prozac, Zoloft, etc. have new "Black Box" warnings on them mandated by the FDA because a small, yet significant, potential for suicide. Their potential for homicide has largely been ignored.

Thanks for reminding me. I should have bookmarked the story just for those links.

Yep. If you still live in the city like I do (in Philly), your wife can still stay home. My single family home in the city cost about 2/3 of what a similar suburban home would cost, and has 1/3 to 1/2 of the property tax burden. A row house or twin would be much, much cheaper.

St. Louis is similar, but I think in both cases it won't fly unless you homeschool or can afford parochial school, because the St. Louis city schools are very bad.

The problem is that many people do not want to homeschool - it's still only about 2% of the population.

Then there is the reluctance many people have to raise children in an inner city area. In my area the farther out from the central core you go, the more conservative the people get.

The advent of the two income family coincided with the explosion of the cost of the nice house in the suburbs with the good school district as middle class whites poured out of cities in the 70's. That house costs two paychecks. Period.

That's becoming increasingly true. Homeschooling is *not* an option for everyone, and I don't see it ever being more than a few percentage of all school age children. However, the advantage of homeschooling is that it frees the family from being tied to the high cost of a "good school district."

In St. Louis County, just about the only "cheap" housing left in good school districts is in traditionally black neighborhoods, and those are rapidly disappearing as they're either gentrified or entirely bulldozed for shopping centers. Were my husband and I earning equivalent salaries today (adjusted for inflation), we wouldn't be able to afford our house or the neighborhood we live in.

Dear Hermann,

Yeah, I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying.

If I were 20 - 25 again, I'd definitely think hard about costs of living in determining where I'd want to settle down.

Even now, I'm 44, and I've been thinking about southwest Virginia, maybe about halfway between Richmond and Williamsburg.

I could sell my house, pay off the mortgage, and pay cash for a house as nice as what I have now, but with more land.

I wouldn't need anywhere near as much income if I didn't have a mortgage. If my business grows some more, I might sell it and do just that. With no debt and a few bucks put away, I could be a little adventurous.

But here's the thing. DC has always been kind of expensive, but up until recently, there were plenty of places within the region that were pretty affordable. If you didn't have to live in McLean, or Fairfax at all, or lower Montgomery, or the Gold Coast of upper Northwest, you could find affordable housing, even up until the late '90s, early '00s.

I sold my four bedroom house in College Park, not far from the University of Maryland, for $130,000 in 1993. As late as 2000, that house was still around $160,000.

I was looking at houses over there. The neighborhood where I lived, houses are going for $300,000 and up.

That's only the last four or five years.

My wife grew up in a dump called Rogers Heights. Twenty years ago, it was a white, working class neighborhood. Today, it's much more crime and drug-infested.

Twenty years ago, the houses there sold for $40,000 - $50,000. Ten years ago, those houses were selling for under $100,000. Five years ago, maybe $150,000. Maybe not quite that much. Looking, I see houses listed there for $260,000 - $300,000.

And the problem is that when folks have lived in a place a long time, gotten pretty far into raising the kids, etc., and all of the sudden, things get wacky, it isn't so easy to move. When my wife and I were young and first married, we could have moved away from the DC area, very easily. But back then, it was still pretty affordable. I didn't have to live in Bethesda.

Now it isn't affordable. If your household income isn't in the high five figures, it's really tough to buy a home in any part of the region anymore. If you want a nice home in a nice community, you need six figures of household income.

If we were in a position to need to grow into another size house, we'd be out of luck. My income has not grown nearly as fast as housing values in this area. I couldn't afford my own house, if I had to buy it today. I moved to this house less than four years ago.

It only happened in the last few years. It was quite sudden.

We have friends who are just about outgrown their current house. They have five kids, and the wife would like to have one more (she's 44, more than one more might be a little bit of a stretch). But even though they have a pretty large house, it's getting a little tight with five, and six would be kinda tough. Fortunately, they're quite well off. If they have to move, they'll be able to afford it. He's got a lucrative IT job, she homeschools, and they've been shrewd in their home-buying, they're real savers, they'll be fine.

But other folks in similar situations come to a point where they can live in cramped quarters, or maybe mom goes back to work. When you're 10 or 20 years into your career, you have three or four or five little ones, with a couple or more in school, little league, etc., moving to a new region isn't so easy.

And then the question is, if it happened in Prince Georges County, Maryland, why would I think it won't eventually happen in Philadelphia? Or other places that are relatively low-cost?

It happened here in less than five years, Hermann. Five years. If you had another two or three kids, would you think about a somewhat larger home? Imagine if the prices all doubled over the course of the next five years, while your income only went up, say, 40% or so.

sitetest.

St. Louis is similar, but I think in both cases it won't fly unless you homeschool or can afford parochial school, because the St. Louis city schools are very bad.

Philadelphia has good public schools I think if you are out of the black areas (its magnet schools are the top high schools in the state). The schools in the black areas are abysmal and border on inhuman. And the parochial schools are very cheap up to 8th grade - about $1200 per child.

Then there is the reluctance many people have to raise children in an inner city area.

I found, growing up in the city better because there were things to do, and you could get their on public transit or bike or walk, so you didn't need to be dependent upon getting a ride from the parents all the time. My neighborhood is very safe because it has a well deserved reputation for not treating street thugs very nicely when caught by the local citizenry. Our biggest problem is probably high school rivals picking fights periodically.

In my area the farther out from the central core you go, the more conservative the people get.

This is another funny thing about Philadelphia. My neighborhood in the city voted for President Bush by a 55% majority. No suburban neighborhood within 5-10 miles of me (I live one block from the city line) was even above 45% for Bush. We also have Republicans as our representatives in the City Council and State House (we would have a Republican State Senator too, except that we were gerrymandered into a majority black district after our State Senator suffered a surprise defeat in 2000). The neighborhing suburban townships have Democrats at those levels.

This image (don't want to paste it cause it has some goofy formatting stuff in it) shows perfectly the attitude not so long ago of the "Boston Brahmins" to the Irish. It shows a caricatured black man and Irishman on either side of a scale, being "weighed in the balance," and they are equal. IOW, the Irishman is "no better than" a nasty 19th century word for black people that starts with an "n."

The blacks had a saying, "Rather be a nigger than a poor white man." Or as was observed to Frederick Law Olmstead down south, when he observed at a dock that blacks had the job of recklessly tossing huge bales of cotton into ship's holds, were the Irishman had to stand in the ship's hold to arrange the cargo, "The slaves are far to valuable to use down there, but if one of the Paddy's get his back broken, nobody loses anything." Or as a black observed, 19th century society was like a cup of coffee: Up at the top, like the cream, was the best of the white folks who were property owners, then in the middle like the coffee was the black folks, then down on the very bottom like the sugar was the low sort of poor whites.

This stratification is why men who were from the lower ranks, like President Andrew Johnson, were so contemptuous of both the upper class whites and the blacks.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.