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.
Let's go back to the freebies. Kids need love. They need it qualitatively and they need it quantitatively. They need it before they head off to school in the morning and they need it when they step off the bus in the afternoon. Its a 24/7 thing. Free.
Kids need guidance. What is the standard admission price to church these days? That's right--nothing. How much does a private Bible tutor cost? Nothing. If you're on shaky ground biblically, like me, learn along with your kids.
Teaching kids good manners doesn't cost a dime but the kids who grow up in a gracious household will reap the rewards later in life. Grace is a gift that keeps on giving.
Kids need exercise so take a ten minute (at least) walk with them every single day, regardless of weather. Can you spare ten minutes for your child, establishing an excellent habit with nothing but rewards?
Like I said, kids are cheap. Parents, on the other hand, cost a bundle. I actually don't think I'll go into that now, maybe save it for Friday's thread. I'm just not in the mood for "But, but but!" Nothing but excuses.
Yes!
No, the cost of GOVERNMENT makes it necessary for both parents to work. Shame on all the greedy free-loaders who want a government check, and the politicians who enable them to get their votes, all at the expense of the children who have really lousy lives. You really don't think that a little one wants to be rousted out of a warm bed at 7:00AM and trundled to face a day of being one of a dozen or more kids competing for the attention of two adults, neither of whom are paid much more than minimum wage. This really should qualify as child abuse.
After a while of grueling deadlines and demanding clients, my husband suggested we hire a housekeeper to come in once a week, and then maybe someone to be home for the boys so that we wouldn't feel so pressured to race home from the city. And then it hit me: I would be working 50-hour weeks so someone could live my life for me - take care of MY kids and MY house.
I quit the next day.
No more posh wardrobe, no more lavish vacations, some serious re-ordering of finances - and absolutely no regrets.
And a major side benefit: as a stay-at-home wife and mother, I found time to get involved with my community and "bond" not only with my children, but with my neighbors as well. I did Meals on Wheels, cooked for a homeless shelter, did advocacy work at the prison, served on the board of a nonprofit organization, started a coffeehouse...
Now that our boys are grown, I work part-time at a pediatricians' office just to earn a little something extra and to reassure myself that I could still hold a job if I had to.
...And I see the effects of dual-career parents on their children. There are some who can manage that exquisite balance of career and family, but it seems to me that most of the time, it is the childen who actually pay the real price for the family lifestyle. Some of those families wise up and opt for the saner and much more modest path - and their children blossom.
A happy life beats a glamorous one any day of the week.
After I had my oldest I absolutely dreaded the idea of returning to work, so I added up how much, approximately, having the baby would cost. Compared to what my husband was making at the time (which wasn't much--$22K annum) the baby wasn't going to cost anything. So why were we living paycheck to paycheck with two incomes before the baby? So I added up how much my husband and I were spending on ourselves. Kept every single receipt for one month, added up our bills, and looked it over with the hubby. We were horrified. In that instant, we stopped being adults (aka "kids who are allowed to smoke and drink") and became parents (aka "people who consider neighborhood association meetings to be free entertainment," aaka "people who consider a midnight drive to Meijers a legitimate vacation"). Never looked back. Never happier.
Preach it, girl.
Wipe that silly smile off your face, Mac, since your font of wisdom’s actual comment on that wise information was as follows: “Ummmm, wrong”
Looking forward to Friday's Table!
I did the daycare/work thing with my oldest, out of divorce-related necessity, and hated it. Totally. Remarried, got out of the work force in '93, subscribed to the "Tightwad Gazette", had a few more children, and the rest is history.
It was hard to get by at first, but like you said, if you really focus on needs, as opposed to wants, it is entirely do-able.
My sister and her husband will soon be adopting a child from China. They own a home (no mortgage), two rentals, three vehicles (Mercedes SUV, Miata, Honda Accord -- all paid for). They own every electronic gizmo ever invented, and both have very good jobs. When they adopt (finally -- sis is 41), she is planning on hiring a nanny to raise their child. WHY BOTHER ADOPTING!!!!! is what I want to scream at her. Sell a friggin' rental or two, give up the insatiable need to own every new "thing" on the market. I am praying that when that precious baby is put in her arms, she and her husband will have a change of heart and priorities.
Re, your tagline: I wonder if sinkEmperor placewd the famous 'sink' inhis massage parlor/library?
Turning the children over to the government.
Year-round school anyone?
THANK YOU!!!!!! Thank you for calling all day school what it is, glorified daycare! It's also a euphemism for full employment for the teacher's union, IMO. My oldest will start Kindergarden in 2 years, and all-day K will be mandatory here that year. Homeschooling is definitely on the table. My 5 yr old shouldn't be forced to attend school all day because somebody else won't leave her "rewarding career" for a couple of years. And spare us all the tripe about how all day K supposedly makes for better students down the line. I'm not buying it. We push too hard and too early, too young -- and still wind up with HS graduates who can barely compete with kids in the 3rd world.
>>>>No, the cost of GOVERNMENT makes it necessary for both parents to work. Shame on all the greedy free-loaders who want a government check, and the politicians who enable them to get their votes, all at the expense of the children who have really lousy lives.
A new phrase to coin, "Political Welfare".
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