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.