The spirit of capitalism, 2000 - emotional maturity of adults

Public Interest, Wntr, 2000 by David Bosworth

I could go on, but the portrait is complete enough and, perhaps, painfully familiar. What I find so insidious here is the extent to which the totality of domestic life is being shaped by economic models, motives, fears, and values: how much the grimly anxious pace of the postmodern workplace has come to command the postmodern household. And, of course, for clarity's sake, I have removed all the potentially corrupting effects of contemporary consumerism, the hedonistic half of the mixed message the economy presents. Statistically speaking, this is a uniquely ascetic postmodern couple. Here, we have no divorce, infidelity, rampant careerism; no alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive shopping or gambling--none of the many forms of self-centered dysfunction that darken our day and rend family life. Here, we have nothing so rash, just a perversely rational schedule of pervasive separation, a desertion of one's own children "on their behalf."

This household has been purged of sexist inequalities, but it has also been stripped of wonder, curiosity, improvisational fun. Mother and father have merged into one cooperative, unisexual provider. The good parent has been reduced to the Good Producer whose job as parent is to supply society with a new generation of good producers--i.e., employees who are already accustomed to highly rationalized social environments and whose skills are upgraded to the ever-evolving specs of the time. The new parent doesn't teach by example; he hires tutors, coaches, experts "in the field." His role is less to cherish and chasten than to outfit and facilitate; less to shape meaning than to make money, furnishing each child with all the materialist gear and rationalist techniques the economy requires.

Even this household's happier moments have been reinvented in the economy's terms. The notion of prescheduled "quality time," for example, converts parenting to corporate standards of executive efficiency. As in the rest of the technological economy, enhanced technique is supposed to reduce the need for management "face time," leading to an implicitly absurd rationalization by which, nevertheless, many of us now run our lives. We believe that the better parents we are, the less time we actually will spend with our children. The parent as passionate advocate--the one lobbying hard on her child's behalf without broader concerns for truth, justice, or even common courtesy--is likewise a rote reenactment of workplace roles, especially as defined by the ever-expanding service domain. Such behavior accurately reflects the highly specialized code of conduct--the so-called professional ethics--of the lawyer, the therapist, the consultant, or the licensed accountant whose firm does the books for both a local church a nd an S&M supply house. Our job at home, like our job in the field, is not to reprimand but to represent. All clients are good clients. Our children have become our customers, and the customer is always right.

Lost havens and lost virtues