It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. - book reviews

Reason, April, 1996 by Gwen J. Broude

Oddly, however, in the world of Hillary Clinton some parents are more susceptible to the influence of human nature than others. Thus, again through personal vignettes, we get a sense of how strong, self-sufficient, and resourceful parents can be. In one such story, Clinton's father, as a boy, badly injures his legs and feet. The doctors want to amputate, but his mother won't let them near her son. She calls her brother-in-law, a country doctor, and orders him to "save my sonny's legs." He does.

In a more mundane example, Chelsea is ill, Clinton is due in court, and no one is around to look after a sick child. Hillary the mother frantically attempts to find someone to fill in as babysitter. Finally, a friend agrees to watch Chelsea.

So some adults are capable of fending for themselves and their families, and of recruiting the help of the village when that is required. These must be parents who have escaped the inevitable developmental march from dependent child to dependent adult. But other parents, somehow, have not. These are the parents who need the help of a special kind of village - the government. It's too bad that Clinton wants to deprive these parents and their children of reaping the advantages of facing and overcoming challenges on their own that she and her family have enjoyed.

Let me say a final word about the "village." The title of this book is taken from an African proverb. The kinds of villages to which the proverb refers are small, homogeneous, and kin-based. They are little platoons. People know each other, interact with each other on a day-to-day basis, and form voluntary associations in which I watch your child and you watch mine. By contrast, although It Takes a Village does portray people helping one another without government interference or coercion, the village that Hillary Clinton has in mind is Uncle Sam. So we have another disconnect, this time between what children and parents need and what the book proposes in the way of policy initiatives. Child rearing is easier and works better when people beyond the nuclear family cooperate. But why this points to a government role is never explained.

In fact, when the government is the village, the job of the parent is made harder. Thus, for example, Clinton correctly notes that the teaching of virtues is a critical child-rearing task and laments how hard the task has become nowadays. But looking to government won't do the trick. Government schools can't teach virtues because government schools are required to play to the lowest common denominator. So we have values clarification instead of the teaching of substantive virtues. Children are encouraged to articulate what values they hold but not why they hold them or whether they are legitimate to hold.

If you want to read some good books on children, go get Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Then go read The Discovery of Freedom by her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, to see what child rearing without government intervention can produce.