D R A M A++Q U E E N

Are you a slut, a slob or a sleazebag? Share your shame in Drama Queen for a Day
(04/14/98)

T A B L E++T A L K

Are schools giving kids too many days off? Discuss teachers' meetings, conferences and extended holidays in Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

The happy prisoner
By Lori Leibovich
Because of Whitewater and Kenneth Starr, she may not be seeing the outside world for the next several years, but Susan McDougal regrets almost nothing
(04/22/98)

A death in the family
By Joyce Millman
Linda McCartney, 1941-1998
(04/21/98)

Paving the road to Yale -- or Palookaville
By Albert Mobilio
Public vs. private school
(04/20/98)

Scenes from a Shake 'N Bake life
By Jennifer Reese
In "The Lunch-Box Chronicles," former bad girl Marion Winik is so blissed out on momhood she makes Erma Bombeck seem cynical
(04/17/98)

Second Thoughts
By Sallie Tisdale
Awaiting surgery to remove a lump, I'm thinking not about losing a breast but about having them
(04/16/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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AMERICA'S WAR ON CHILDREN | PAGE 2 OF 3

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But the first section of the book begs a big question: Exactly who, besides feminists, has declared this so-called "war against parents"? The next section answers resoundingly: everybody. It's a mind-numbing recitation of all that's wrong with America. I've come to think that the book-writing left-liberal establishment has a secret software program that searches multiple databases for bad news and strings it together as prose. I've read all this before; in fact, I've written it -- the droning apocalyptic litany of what's wrong with American capitalism. Page after page of statistics about declining wages, rising male unemployment, single parenthood, child poverty, corporate downsizing, the lengthening work week, declining SAT scores, rising juvenile drug use and childhood obesity (yes, obesity). They all run together so that, after a while, no one fact seems more significant than any other.

Right-wing readers will enjoy their rants about the decline of pro-family America, their lament that Wally and Beaver have been replaced by Beavis and Butt-head in American living rooms everywhere. To break up the hard data they throw in news clips, pop culture samplings and bizarre anecdotes that prove we're all going to hell in a handbasket, in a tone reminiscent of conservative culture-cranks like William Bennett and Dinesh D'Souza. Breathlessly, and with an utter lack of humor or perspective, they describe the cultural war against parents: Did you know that on television, a character in "My So-Called Life" talked about wanting to kill her mother, while the parents on "Party of Five" are all conveniently dead, as are the moms on "Soul Man" and "The Gregory Hines Show"? The Oscar-winning movie "Shine" comes in for attack for exaggerating the demanding father's role in his son's mental illness, as do books like "Toxic Parents" and "How to Avoid Your Parents' Mistakes when You Raise Your Children" for preaching the myth of "parental incompetence and failure." In music, they're scandalized by the band Megadeth, which sings that "parents are dickheads," and Marilyn Manson, whose fans wear T-shirts reading "Kill Your Parents." But they praise Tupac Shakur's "Dear Mama," because even though he complains about his mother's crack addiction, he acknowledges how much she sacrificed for him.

I admire this earnest collaboration between a black man and a white woman, and I want to like their take on race, especially the way they resist tracing all social ills to the so-called black underclass. The problem is, as in the case of Tupac, many of their examples of African-American resistance to our "parent-hurting" culture are a little nutty. They blast white, celebrity single moms Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell as noxious role models, while praising black singers Whitney Houston and Snoop Doggy Dogg for staying in notoriously bad marriages. Why even go there? Their "Dan Quayle Was Right" reasoning, which equates the childbearing choices of wealthy, middle-aged white women and poor black teenagers, makes no sense except as a sop to the right. During the very time that Madonna, Rosie and Murphy Brown were choosing single motherhood, the black teen birth rate was actually falling, by 23 percent in the last five years. They don't explain that, or even acknowledge it, but then good news always discombobulates liberals.

And there are many such sops to the right. They blame welfare for vastly increasing illegitimacy in the black community, but their only footnote to prove it is a single, little-known study -- and better known research has found little or no link. (Later they attack welfare reform for threatening the connection between mothers and children.) They blame feminism and the media for "disabling dads" and portraying men as "redundant and expendable." They cite statistics showing that stepfathers are more likely to abuse children than natural fathers to conclude "a society that increasingly relies on substitute parents is one that veers increasingly toward violence." At the same time, they lambaste the child-welfare establishment for exaggerating the problem of child abuse, another example of the ideological schizophrenia that distinguishes "The War Against Parents."

Lost in all the handwringing and generalizing are a couple of interesting chapters. I know it's feminist heresy, but I enjoyed their examination of what draws men to groups like the Promise Keepers and the Nation of Islam (which they provocatively link), and I think they correctly diagnose a spiritual and psychological hunger that secular political and civic groups haven't addressed and probably can't. I was hoping the chapter would show how to help men find meaning in family life without restoring patriarchy, but that was too much to expect of these authors.

The book also features a helpful discussion about the ways public- and private-sector policy created the good life for so many American families in the 1950s and '60s. After World War II, tax reform created the mortgage-interest deduction -- opening home-ownership to a new strata of American families -- and increased the dependent deduction while reducing tax rates for married couples. Such moves deliberately privileged wage-earners with families, creating conditions that would allow couples to rely on one income to raise children. The private sector backed the notion of a "family wage" as well, signing generous contracts with American unions that traded high wages for labor peace and management control over production and investment decisions. Maybe the most important pro-family legislation of those years was the G.I. Bill, a windfall that made money available for returning soldiers to get an education, secure medical insurance and buy homes.

N E X T__P A G E: Tougher times