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88 Part I " The Changing Family
seen as the cure for child poverty. Mothers should not be seen as less than full citizens if
they are not married or not employed (in 1989 there were only 16 million males between
the ages of 25 and 34 who made over $12,000 compared with 20 million females of the
same age who either had a child or wanted one).62 National family policy should instead
begin with a value on women s autonomy and self-determination that includes the right
to bear children. Mother-citizens are helping to reproduce the next generation for the
whole society, and in that responsibility they deserve at least partial support.
From a feminist perspective the goal of the family is not only to bring up a healthy
and productive new generation; families also provide the intimate and supportive group
of kin or fictive kin that foster the health and well-being of every person young or old,
male or female, heterosexual, homosexual, or celibate. Recognition as family should
therefore not be confined to the traditional two-parent unit connected by blood, mar-
riage, or adoption, but should be extended to include kin of a divorced spouse (as Stacey
documented in her study of Silicon Valley families), same-sex partnerships, congregate
households of retired persons, group living arrangements, and so on.63 Twenty years ago
economist Nancy Barrett noted that such diversity in family and household form was
already present. Among all U.S. households in 1976, no one of the six major types con-
stituted more than 15 20 percent: couples with and without children under eighteen with
the wife in the labor force (15.4 and 13.3 percent respectively); couples with or without
children under 18 with the wife not in the labor force (19.1 and 17.1 percent); female- or
male-headed households (14.4 percent); and single persons living alone (20.6 percent).64
Such diversity both describes and informs contemporary family values in the
United States. Each family type is numerous enough to have a legitimacy of its own, yet
no single form is the dominant one. As a result the larger value system has evolved to
encompass beliefs and rules that legitimate each type on the spectrum. The regressive al-
ternative is fundamentalism that treats the two-parent family with children as the only
legitimate form, single-parent families as unworthy of support, and the nontraditional
forms as illegitimate. In 1995 the general population appears to have accepted diversity
of family forms as normal. A Harris poll of 1,502 women and 460 men found that only
2 percent of women and 1 percent of men defined family as being about the traditional
nuclear family. One out of ten women defined family values as loving, taking care of, and
supporting each other, knowing right from wrong or having good values, and nine out
of ten said society should value all types of families.65 It appears most Americans believe
that an Aunt Polly single-parent type of family for a Huck Finn that provides economic
support, shelter, meals, a place to sleep and to withdraw, is better than no family at all.
Amidst gradual acceptance of greater diversity in family form, the gender-role revo-
lution is also loosening the sex-role expectations traditionally associated with breadwin-
ning and homemaking. Feminists believe that men and women can each do both.66 In
addition, women in advanced industrial nations have by and large converged upon a
new life pattern of multiple roles by which they combine work and family life. The
negative outcome is an almost universal double burden for working women in which
they spend eighty-four hours per week on paid and family work, married men spend
seventy-two hours, and single persons without children spend fifty hours.67 The posi-
tive consequence, however, appears to be improved physical and mental health for those
women who, though stressed, combine work and family roles.68 In addition, where a
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Chapter 2 " Public Debates and Private Lives 89
woman s husband helps her more with the housework, she is less likely to think of get-
ting a divorce.69
The Precarious Situation of Children
The principal remedy that conservatives and liberals would apply to the problems of
children is to restore the two-parent family by reducing out-of-wedlock births, increas-
ing the presence of fathers, and encouraging couples who are having marital difficulties
to avoid divorce for the sake of their children. Feminists, on the other hand, are skeptical
that illegitimacy, father absence, or divorce are the principal culprits they are made out to
be. Leon Eisenberg reports that over half of all births in Sweden and one-quarter of births
in France are to unmarried women, but without the disastrous correlated effects observed
in the United States. Arlene Skolnick and Stacey Rosencrantz cite longitudinal studies
showing that most children recover from the immediate negative effects of divorce.70
How then, while supporting the principle that some fraction of women should be
able to head families as single parents, do feminists analyze the problem of ill health,
antisocial behavior, and poverty among children? Their answer focuses on the lack of in-
stitutional supports for the new type of dual-earner and single-parent families that are more
prevalent today. Rather than attempt to force families back into the traditional mold,
feminists note that divorce, lone-mother families, and women s employment are on the
rise in every industrialized nation. But other countries have not seen the same devastat-
ing decline in child well-being, teen pregnancy, suicides and violent death, school failure,
and a rising population of children in poverty. These other countries have four key ele-
ments of social and family policy which protect all children and their mothers: (1) work
guarantees and other economic supports; (2) child care; (3) health care; and (4) housing
subsidies. In the United States these benefits are scattered and uneven; those who can
pay their way do so; only those who are poor or disabled receive AFDC for economic
support, some help with child care, Medicaid for health care, and government-subsidized
housing.
A first line of defense is to raise women s wages through raising the minimum wage,
then provide them greater access to male-dominated occupations with higher wages.
One-half of working women do not earn a wage adequate to support a family of four
above the poverty line. Moreover, women in low-wage occupations are subject to fre-
quent lay-offs and lack of benefits. Training to improve their human capital, provision
of child care, and broadening of benefits would help raise women s capacity to support
a family. Eisenberg reports that the Human Development Index of the United Nations
( HDI), which ranks countries by such indicators as life expectancy, educational levels, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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