All this common sense is being lost in a rising tide of political child abuse. Political child abuse is the manipulation of “pro-family” and “pro-children” themes to promote political handouts that have little, if anything, to do with family stability or children’s welfare. President Bush will apparently make this pitch in his State of the Union Message by proposing a tax break (an increase in the personal exemption) for families.
He’s hardly alone. Political child abuse spans the ideological spectrum, as advocates trot out favored schemes, such as subsidized day care, in the name of helping children and families. There’s a fair amount of self-deception and cynicism here. Government economic aid can’t do much to affect family life (and what it does do ought to be focused heavily on the poorest families). What’s mainly involved is political showmanship.
In Bush’s case, the aim is to provide a middle-class tax cut in an election year. True, the personal exemption ($2,150 in 1991) hasn’t kept up with income growth since the late 1940s. If it had, it would now exceed $7,000. But for most families, a slightly lower tax bite won’t reduce family breakup or create a better home life.
If I have to be bribed to pay attention to my children, then I’m doomed as a responsible parent. My children are out of luck. Things that matter can’t be bought. Divorce? Of course, economic hard times can shatter strained marriages. But a small tax break won’t keep families together. If wealth guaranteed togetherness, the rich would never divorce and all their children would be happy.
It is not that children’s welfare and family cohesion aren’t critical for our future. They are, and (as everyone knows) the trends have been fairly grim. A new study by Victor Fuchs and Diane Reklis of the National Bureau of Economic Research reports that between 1960 and 1988:
The annual suicide rate for teenagers (15 to 19 years old) tripled from 3.6 to 11.3 per 100,000.
Births to unwed mothers rose from 5 to 26 percent of all births.
The share of children in one-parent families rose from 5.5 to 14.2 percent.
But government didn’t cause these trends. Personal behavior is what matters most. Contrary to popular belief, government spending on children has risen, as Fuchs and Reklis show. In 1988, total spending per child (adjusted for inflation) on services such as schools and health care was up 22 percent from 1980 and 45 percent from 1970.
“The problem is cultural, not economic or political,” says David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, a research group. We all search for individual self-fulfillment-the “pursuit of happiness.” But that quest often weakens our commitment to families, whose well-being is essential for our (and society’s) happiness. Most families struggle with this contradiction. Everyone wants independence. More women work. An estimated half of all marriages will end in divorce (that’s our freedom to opt out). There’s less time for children: to love them, play with them, help with homework and discipline them.
But children are not only the victims of this process. They’re participants, too. They absorb society’s conflicting values. By grade school, they chafe at restrictions and demand more freedom. Parental authority, already weak, weakens further. “The more of the manmade world that children experience, the more they assume they know (and as they become teenagers, the less they think they need adults),” writes Richard Louv in “Childhood’s Future.”
No government program can cut through this tangle. Many “pro-family” proposals are (like the Bush tax cut) merely benefits for selected constituencies. Consider demands for government to subsidize day care. That would make life easier-and work more profitable-for many two-earner families. But in so doing, it would tempt more mothers to leave home or to spend more time on the job. That’s not necessarily good for children. The point is not that mothers shouldn’t have jobs. It is that most families should decide on the best mix of paid work and parenting without the distortion of government subsidies.
Loose use of pro-family rhetoric involves two dangers. First, it distracts attention from the one area where government might do modest good: helping the poorest 20 to 25 percent of families. These families-including many single-parent households-are nearest the edge, where low incomes can defeat good parental instincts. There’s a legitimate debate as to the best policy: Is it providing more tax relief to the working poor to raise their earnings from jobs? Is it spending more on programs like Head Start? Should welfare rules be tightened to deter out-of-wedlock births or to compel work?
Let this debate proceed. But let’s also remember that governments at all levels are not, to put it mildly, flush with funds. We shouldn’t squander what little might be available on largely symbolic political gestures.
The other danger is sending the wrong message to the vast majority of middle-class families. A lot of pro-family rhetoric implies that, somehow, government is responsible for strengthening family life. Liberals want more “support systems.” Conservatives want to promote stay-at-home motherhood with tax breaks. Both sides exaggerate the impact of government policy on families.
Folks, no one will raise our children for us. We all contend with the demands on our time, the squeeze between home and jobs, the clamor of our children, their emotional needs and ours. This is the most important work of our lives. It’s the source of our greatest possible pleasure and pain. The responsibilities and choices are ours.
