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Technology heavily burdens the two-adult—or what anthropologists call the "nuclear"—family. Modern society demands what Yale Psychologist Kenneth Keniston calls "technological ego dictatorship," a talent for divided living that requires coolly rational behavior at work, reserving feeling for home. Wholeness is often elusive. "Home is where the heart is," but more than one-third of U.S. mothers work at least part time, and some fathers hardly see the kids all week. According to Psychiatric Social Worker Virginia Satir, the average family dinner lasts ten to 20 minutes; some families spend as little as ten minutes a week together. Studies show that father absence has baneful effects (especially on boys), ranging from low self-esteem to hunger for immediate gratification and susceptibility to group influence. Hippies commonly flee from father-absent homes in which despairing mothers either overindulge their children or, as surrogate achievers, overpressure them. "The big thing," a college-freshman acidhead explains, "is that my father makes more of his work than it really is, leaving us the crumbs." Recalls a bitter Navy daughter: "I despise my father. He was never there. He was in the Navy 120 years."
With their own uncertainties, U.S. parents lead the world in gobbling child-care books; Spock's sales recently passed 20.5 million. Whatever their merits, the books produce a good many faddishly permissive parents. Often a father is more involved in living up to his child's expectations than the child is in living up to his. To avoid "hurting" children, he shields them from adult power, indulges their impulses, and thus inflicts the injury that a New York headmaster calls "denial of denial." Such children are stunned when they discover that parents don't practice what they preach.
While most parents sigh that "there but for the grace of God go I," the press now daily inflates incidents suggesting that hell hath no fury like a scornful child. In panic, some weak parents suddenly fight dirty, for example, having a child arrested after they find pot in his room. Equally destructive are those so worried about their own status that they hush up serious misconduct and bribe miscreants with new cars. Still others incredibly flee on vacation, leaving their kids to stage monster open-house parties. Then there are swinging parents, who even try LSD with the kids, another form of child abandonment that robs children of adult limits to test themselves against. As one hippie-watching sociologist puts it: "How can you rebel sexually against a mother who will be happy to fit you with a diaphragm at the age of 14?"