The ideal and the issue
McCarthy, Abigail
Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy THE IDEAL & THE ISSUE FACING REALITY IN HELPING FAMILIES There was an element of desperation in the protest of the presidential candidate's wife to the...
...You don't understand my life at all...
...I can understand yours because I know so many young people, but you don't understand mine.'' Barbara Bush, wife of the Republican contender for the presidential nomination, was reacting with near exasperation to the reporter's persistent and repetitious questioning of what people today call her "lifestyle...
...And yet—one realized it with a start—Mrs...
...Everyone belongs to the human family—the family of God...
...One has the sad feeling that to attain or to restore the ideal—' 'to nourish the primary relationships of husbands, wives, and children," to make "authentic family life" possible, we would have to step back a hundred years in time and begin again...
...Odds are that the interviewer was being deliberately provocative...
...For varied reasons other wives have been so troubled in the role that they have had to resort to extreme measures to recover from alcoholism...
...Families, especially those whose influence is lessened by poverty, or social status, must be allowed their rightful input in these decisions which affect their daily lives," the statement continues...
...One former candidate has no wife at all...
...In addition, because of the earlier deaths of a brother and sister, she finds herself the one remaining child of aging parents...
...Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy THE IDEAL & THE ISSUE FACING REALITY IN HELPING FAMILIES There was an element of desperation in the protest of the presidential candidate's wife to the trendy young woman interviewing her...
...Can we then base our plans for public policy and legislation on that ideal family...
...But the underlying assumption that family policy deals with the whole, unbroken and permanent family is making political choice difficult...
...that it is considered the ideal role by those who push for legislation to strengthen and support the family in our culture...
...The presidential variations from the ideal are only the tip of the iceberg...
...Margaret Adams, senior national affairs editor of a family magazine, testifying at the preliminary hearings of the Pennsylvania Forum on Families gives dimension to the problem by explaining her personal situation...
...Must we not deal with what is...
...They need childcare centers, tax relief, part-time and flexi-time working hours, community centers for after-school recreation, scholarships, and safer, better schools and better programs for the aged for whom they are also responsible...
...Do not misunderstand me...
...Bush is almost unique in her experience among this year's presidential candidates' wives...
...This is at the heart of the struggle for delegates in the three regional meetings which comprise the White House Conference on the Family this year...
...Men presenting themselves as choices for the presidency include those with troubled families, those who are divorced, those who prefer an alternative '' lifestyle.'' The fact that this inclusion is made with so little offense to the national sensibilities shows how far we have come from what was once the national ideal...
...But political choice must be made on the basis of practical reality and justice for all—that is, for each and every person whatever his or her family constellation...
...Single parents—often made so by cruel circumstance—work as hard as traditional parents to rear their children in dignity and decency...
...What of other families—families which are not even given the dignity of definition in this formulation...
...It may well be that they are right who feel, as do the American bishops, that the departure from what was the ideal norm stems from the fact that the family has not been properly sustained and nourished in public policy...
...In addition to the strain of this situation , Margaret Adams and her parents are anguished by the knowledge "that the children of the broken homes of today will be hard-put to establish traditionally stable, well-balanced families tomorrow...
...Bush's trendy interviewer, no longer value the traditional or understand it...
...Agreed, we have come a startlingly long way from the ideal—so far that there are many who do not accept it as the ideal...
...But there are many, like the young reporter, to whom it is genuinely puzzling...
...Even Rosalynn Carter has, as she puts it, "always worked"—in the family businesses, it is true, but still outside the home...
...Still others are the second, wives of divorced men and were career women before their marriages...
...Bush had married young, had been married to the same man for thirty-four years, that she had had no career other than wifehood, rearing her children and performing the civic and volunteer duties associated with marriage to a prominent man...
...There is further anguish in knowing that these children find themselves "scarred by the subtle mark of inferiority that a tradition-bound society inflicts upon all children who, quite naturally through death, have one parent or none, or through divorce, have 'nontraditional' parents to see them through their childhood or early adulthood...
...And that, furthermore, she insisted that she was fulfilled by that career, and, more, had grown and developed in capability and independence as a result of it...
...That Mrs...
...The test of how we value the family is whether we are willing to foster, in government and business, in urban planning and farm policy, in education, health care, in the arts and sciences, in our total social and cultural environment, moral values which nourish the primary relationships of husbands, wives, and children and make authentic family life possible," says the administrative board of the United States Catholic Conference in listing the issues Catholics should consider in making choices in this campaign year of 1980...
...For the majority, one suspects, it is still the ideal...
...Thus, the projection of family life in America at the highest and most visible level is no longer that of the enduring monogamous family with the father as breadwinner, mother as homemaker...
...These parents, entering their eighties, have nine grandchildren in three single-parented families...
...Well and good...
...The fear is, of course, that we are breeding people who, like Mrs...
...The conference sees a practical application of the ideal in programs and policies relating to housing, employment, food, education, health care, human rights, and the family farm...
...Abigail McCarthy 25 April 1980: 233...
...Commonweal: 232 What couldn't the interviewer understand...
...The ideal persists...
...You can't seem to understand it...
...They find themselves called upon for emotional and financial assistance, and part-time child care as well, in a decade of their lives in which, according to the ideal and the words of scripture, they should have been able to count the blessings of children and children's children...
...Surely she must have known that the role which Barbara Bush had accepted and enjoyed has been considered the normal role in the family for a woman throughout most of American history...
...A woman of 55, she works as much because she must, she says, as because she enjoys working, in order to support her two fatherless sons "who have been twice bereft of their father's presence within their once ideal family existence—first through divorce, and, shortly thereafter, because of his death...
Vol. 107 • April 1980 • No. 8
