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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?