The demise of child-rearing

Public Interest, Fall, 2000 by Lyric Wallwork Winik

CHILD-REARING is America's cultural third rail. It is the gateway for debating everything from family structure (or the lack thereof) to exactly who should care for those regarded as the most vulnerable and malleable among us: very young children. And it has become far from a private debate, to be had around the kitchen table after the kids have brushed their teeth and gone to bed. Today, there are all manner of mental health professionals, child development experts, counselors, researchers, authors, and radio call-in hosts ready and waiting to dispense advice and guidelines. Even various arms of the federal government have weighed in with their estimations of what's best for their smallest citizens. In the name of the children, federal tax law offers a $500-per-child tax credit (interestingly enough, a similar policy was first proposed by Theodore Roosevelt for the same sum), and federal law enforcement made armed raids to snatch Elian Gonzalez and to save the supposedly abused children in the Branch Davidi an compound at Waco.

Indeed, "think of the children" has become a contemporary mantra, and, with some 200 years of child development theorizing, from Locke to Spock to Penelope Leach, there is no shortage of accumulated thought about infants and children and no shortage of prescriptions for mental stimulation, emotional well-being, or the fostering of creativity and autonomy. But in many respects, not since four- and five-year-old children were sent down into the mines or consigned to the factory floor has it been harder to be a child. Children are more medicated than ever before. They are routinely exposed to sexual situations sooner, as well as to violence, illicit drugs, and alcohol. With the rise of sexual predators, they are for the most part no longer free to hop on their bikes and explore the suburban world; many are not allowed even to walk an urban or suburban block alone. Spontaneous play time has given way to scheduled play dates and organized pint-sized soccer leagues. There is structured day care or morning care and after care at school. Thus, at a time when human life spans are lengthening, there is sobering evidence that American childhood, as most of us have understood it, is eroding.

And for all the admonitions to "think of the children," there is also quite a bit of time in contemporary life when we do not think of them at all. Movie theaters, malls, and supermarkets are promoting "drop-in centers," where children can be left so adults can go about their business unencumbered. Our entertainment culture--movies, books, and television--has, with the exception of kid-oriented programming, the occasional household comedy, and a few "reality-based" dramas, largely airbrushed children out of the picture. Where they do exist, it is primarily off screen, and even then, the most dedicated celluloid parents do not race in with spit-up on their shirts or tear their hair out looking for the binky in the diaper bag. Thus, when many Americans settle down to be entertained, children are overwhelmingly unseen and unheard.

Root causes and revolutionary changes

All of this did not happen overnight. And while it might be nice simply to point to some cultural tsunami, say the 1960s, that swept in and shattered centuries of convention, it is also possible to look at a seven-year-old girl today dressed in a crop-top or strappy halter with platforms and Gapri pants heading off to a hair and make-up "makeover" birthday party and see an echo of Brueghel the Elder's painting of children's games, in which the children were painted simply as small adults, with all the same physical features, just reduced in size. Back then, in Brueghel's late medieval Western world, once a child left the cradle, adult society beckoned. (Today, it may not be so much adult society as a prolonged adolescence.)

But it remains true today, as was also true then, that our conceptions of childhood are not static. Indeed, many of the current issues surrounding childhood--and no doubt some of the ensuing contradictions and confusion--have their roots in various conceptions and theories of childhood that have come down to us in broad brush from the past. Many of our assumptions, and even the starting points for current debates and arguments, are fully derivative of the best of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century views on childhood and the child, from thinkers like Locke, Rousseau, and John Wesley.

But amid this seeming consistency, there is one staggering change: For 1999, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that roughly only one in four children was being raised by a stay-at-home, nonemployed mom. Other numbers are even lower: The Clinton administration and various interest groups cite the figure that nearly eight in ten mothers work outside the home, while evaluations of the most recent U.S. Census claim that only 18 percent of children will have their mom at home full-time from childhood through adolescence. Even allowing within these demographics for a higher number of mothers who stay home with an infant, as opposed to those who remain at home with a school-age six-year-old, those numbers may be telling us something important: What is changing may be less our conceptions of childhood and even child-rearing than our conceptions of mothers, parenthood, and parents. Where once the raising of a child was rooted in notions of parental self-sacrifice, today it is being pushed aside by demands for ad ult freedom and choice. In fact, childhood isn't so much about the kids anymore. It's about the parents. And for this, there is no easy historical echo, no ready road map.