TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082691/0826510.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.5 KB | 248 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 10

Watching a Generation Waste Away


Economist SYLVIA ANN HEWLETT argues that America is callously
treating its youth like excess baggage and throwing away its
future prosperity

By JANICE CASTRO/NEW YORK and Sylvia Ann Hewlett


    Q. Feminists call you a backslider and a traitor,
conservatives say you sound like a big-spending liberal, and
liberals say you sound like a reactionary. Why do so many
different groups attack you?

    A. Because I am extremely concerned about what is
happening to the American family. Those of us in the sane center
are always being clobbered by both the left and the right. We
think of ourselves as a nation that cherishes its children, but,
in fact, America treats its children like excess baggage. In all
other countries, childbirth is seen as an event that is vitally
important to the life and future of the nation. But in the U.S.
we treat child rearing as some kind of expensive private hobby.


    Q. In what ways?

    A. Our tax code offers greater incentives for breeding
horses than for raising children. We slash school budgets and
deny working parents the right to spend even a few weeks with
their newborns. We spend 23% of the federal budget on the
elderly but less than 5% on children. We refer to pregnancy as
a "temporary disability," putting it on a par with breaking your
leg.


    Q. What is the impact on children?

    A. Children of all races and income levels are suffering.
Nearly one-third of our children drop out before finishing high
school; only 6% do so in Japan, 8% in western Germany.


    Q. What kinds of changes are needed to address these
problems?

    A. We need parenting leaves, for one thing. When Brazil
rewrote its constitution in 1988, it was seen as an inalienable
right for mothers to spend some time with their newborn
children. In this country, 60% of working women have no
maternity leave. If they must spend time at home with their new
baby, they stand to lose their job.


    Q. What about private child care?

    A. Most parents cannot afford decent child care. I spoke
recently with a young father in Phoenix. He and his wife must
both work to make ends meet. He told me what it felt like to put
his five-week-old baby daughter in what he called a kennel:
third-rate day care. It was all they could afford. They have no
health benefits, and neither had the right to time off when
their daughter was born. The worst part is that their situation
is normal in this country. But the average European country now
guarantees five months off with full pay after the birth of a
child. You would never find a five-week-old child in day care.


    Q. In your new book, When the Bough Breaks: The Cost of
Neglecting Our Children, you maintain that this is a peculiarly
American problem. Why?

    A. When it comes to family policy, we're caught between
two fantasy worlds, one described by the right, one described
by the left. The left behaves as if we do not have children.
They have focused on equal opportunities, ignoring the fact
that individuals who are nurturing children cannot compete on
equal footing with those who are not. The left has been so
concerned with the rights of people to live however they choose
that they cannot even decide what a family is.

    Meanwhile, the right talks about traditional family values
but does nothing to help families. They act as if we are living
in the '50s, when women stayed home to raise the children. Day
care was a dirty word. A hands-off government policy on
families made more sense then. More families were intact, for
one thing.


    Q. In part because there were strong social prohibitions
against divorce, parents were expected to put their children's
interests first, and staying together was viewed as the best way
to care for children.

    A. Yes, even if that is not always true. At least we put
the children first. These days we treat divorce as just another
personal choice. Birth control has made it possible to choose
when to have children, and liberalized divorce laws have made it
easy to abandon them. Parents now spend 40% less time with their
children than they did about 15 years ago.


    Q. What about the argument that working women have brought
these problems on themselves and are now asking the government
to pick up the slack?

    A. No, no, no. Working mothers are always the scapegoat.
But look, real hourly wages have fallen 19% since 1973, so most
families need two jobs just to get by. If women were not
working, the American family would be in desperate financial
trouble by now. Yet we seem to expect women somehow to rear
their children in their spare time. We persist in thinking of
child care as a woman's issue. It's not. Fathers are more to
blame for the parenting deficit in our society.


    Q. Why?

    A. Too many still think that taking care of the children
is women's work. And after divorce, almost half the fathers
drop out of sight.


    Q. In your book, you argue that the liberalization of
social attitudes and the changes in family law are partly to
blame. Weren't no-fault and other divorce reforms intended to
help women and children?

    A. But they made it too easy to dump the children.
Twenty-four percent of the children in this country are growing
up without fathers. At one time, society viewed divorced fathers
as somewhat irresponsible. Now we see them as eligible males.
We have forgotten that while marriages may not last, parenthood
is forever. We are living with the appalling consequences of all
this neglect. Teenage suicides have tripled since 1960. Since
'71, the number of teenagers hospitalized for psychiatric care
has increased from 16,000 to 263,000. More than 80% of them have
no father at home.


    Q. You started out as a development economist interested
in Third World countries. What made you focus your work on the
American family?

    A. My own experience, to a great extent. I entered the
work force at a time in the early '70s that many of us saw as
the Golden Age of expanding opportunities for women. I was
teaching at Barnard College, which was a leading center of
women's studies. But when I began to have children, I discovered
that a lot of people seemed to feel women were somehow cheating
if they asked for things like maternity leave. Feminists said
I was asking for "special privileges, a free ride." The men on
the faculty told me that getting pregnant would jeopardize my
chances for tenure -- and they were right. I didn't get it. The
thing that really brought home to me the serious problems that
American families face was the realization that I was better off
than most. I had a loving and supportive husband and a very
decent income. I was armed to the teeth with advanced degrees.
If I was having so much trouble, what about all those women
without choices?


    Q. When did you begin to blame government policies for the
problems of working parents?

    A. About the same time that my first child was born, one
of my sisters had her first baby. She was teaching at a
secondary school in Manchester, England. I was astounded when
she told me that she had seven months' maternity leave at full
pay. I thought she must live in an enlightened place. But when
I looked into it, I discovered that it was the U.S., not
Manchester, that was out of step with the rest of the world.


    Q. What accounts for that difference?

    A. In the U.S. we have confused equal rights with
identical treatment, ignoring the realities of family life.
After all, only women can bear children. And in this country,
women must still carry most of the burden of raising them. We
think that we are being fair to everyone by stressing identical
opportunities, but in fact we are punishing women and children.


    Q. In what ways?

    A. Working women pay a steep price for motherhood. Look
what happens: if you take a 27-year-old American woman right
now, she is doing very well. Whether she is a lawyer or a bus
driver, she is earning almost 90% of the male wage. But the same
woman at 35, with two children, working full time, is earning
46% of the male wage.

    Take a Frenchwoman, age 27: she's earning 75% of the male
wage. She is not doing as well as her American counterpart
because she does not have the same opportunities. But take her
at 35, with two children, working full time, and guess what?
She's still earning 75% of the male wage. She isn't losing
ground. And that is because of the extraordinary investment
France has made in preschool, maternity leave and other family
supports. She does not have to quit her job when her children
are small or limit herself to simple jobs close to home. She
does not lose seniority and career momentum.


    Q. Can we afford to match those programs?

    A. Good family policy is cost effective. The confusion and
stress and emotional deprivation in the home are robbing our
children of the chance to succeed. We are facing a growing labor
shortage in this country. Yet because of the rising skill
demands of the workplace, many of our dropouts are simply
unemployable. A technology-based economy cannot absorb workers
who are not literate and who lack rudimentary mathematical
skills.


    Q. Aren't you describing mostly the inner-city poor?

    A. No. As tragic as their situation is, the problems
afflict middle-class children as well. Even high school
graduates are coming up short in meeting the demands of the
workplace. Chemical Bank has reported that it must interview 40
high school graduates to find one person who can be trained to
become a teller. All they are seeking is eighth-grade-level
skills, and they cannot find them in most high school graduates.


    Q. Beyond parenting leave, what do you think we need to do?

    A. We need access to free prenatal care. Companies should
provide flextime and compressed schedules for working parents
so that they can have more time with their families. We need
mortgage subsidies for young families and tougher enforcement
of child-support laws. We should throw sand in the machinery of
divorce, force parents to think about what they are doing. We
must hold parents accountable for the welfare of their children,
and ourselves responsible for the care of America's youth.
Otherwise we will not make it. Our standard of living will
steadily decline. And the truth is, only a society that
cherishes its children deserves to thrive.