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My understanding of the family can be summarized in two propositions, based on my years as a clinical psychologist working with children and as an author of books for parents. First, I believe that becoming a parent is the most important commitment a human being can undertake - that nothing in life is more individually rewarding and socially important than forming families and raising children. Second, I believe that families in our society are under great stress and the family as a social unit is being threatened by some of our deepest cultural, political and economic trends. If both of these propositions were true, the result is alarming: as individuals and as a society, we stand to lose what we need most. This dilemma -- its dimensions and consequences as well as what can be done about it -- forms the subject of this welcome and much-needed book of essays on the state of the family in America. This book breaks new ground. It focuses on family well-being rather than on partisan ideological agendas. It rejects the tired political polarizations - left versus right, bigger government versus smaller government - that dominated the family debate in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, the authors try for something new. The reader can sense their efforts to assert the need for family-oriented cultural values, while at the same time affirming the need for new public- and private-sector policies to strengthen family life and to help families in need. This book strives, in short, for a new consensus on family values and family policies of the 1990s. The ideas presented here point us in a new direction. It is a direction that I believe our society must follow if we are concerned for our long-term well-being, especially the well-being of our children. I see these essays, then, as an important intellectual resource, not only for scholars, policy makers, and civic leaders, but also for all parents and family members who are concerned about the quality of family life in our society. Finally, this book comes at an opportune moment. As we enter a new decade, I see all around us a greater emphasis on the family and on family values. There is a growing recognition in our society that we must improve the quality of family life and especially the quality of life for children. This new concern is evident in corporate America, as employees and business leaders strive to fashion more family-freindly workplace policies. It is also evident in opinion poll data, popular culture, policy debates and the media. Some of this cultural tilt stems for demographics. Our society, for example, is becoming increasingly alarmed about the growing number of children living in poverty. In earlier generations, older people were poorer than any other age group. Today, children are our poorest Americans. One in five children in the United States today is born into poverty. About 40% of all poor Americans are children. We recognize that much of this problem is the result of teen pregnancy, single-parent homes, and family breakdown. The solution therefore, must lie in large part in strengthening the family unit. This will be a major social and public policy challenge in the coming decade. There is another demographic reason. The huge baby-boom generation, born in the 15 years following World War II, is now having and raising children in record numbers. In 1989, over four million babies were born in the United States - more than in any other previous year of our history. The birth rate, or the number of children born per woman, is also inching up, in part due to the fact that many couples now in their late 20s and 30s, who had delayed childbearing for a decade or more longer than their parent's generation, are now deciding to have children. This demographic shift is already causing reverberations in our culture and in our politics. Barbara Whitehead, a social historian, has recently described this emerging change in the baby-boom generation: As they step into parenthood, they cross a great cultural divide. They discover that the values that guided them as young adults aren't very useful in raising their children. The same culture that supported them as individuals, they are now realizing, is indifferent or even hostile to them as parents and to their children. In short, for a number of reasons the family will become a major and growing national focus in the coming years. We thus face unique opportunity in in the 1990s to create a more family-friendly society. The challenge is large and the stakes are high. With the seminal ideas and the challenges to the old thinking presented in this book, we can now declare: Let the new debate being. From the Foreword by Dr. Lee Salk
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Institute for American Values |
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Rebuilding the Nest: