Paying for values
Bates, Timothy D.
CAMPAIGN '92 PAYING FOR VALUES THE REAL NEEDS OF REAL FAMILIES BS-TV recently reported that only one in three children is now raised in a two-parent home. That is just one indicator of the...
...We also need more treatment programs for substance abusers, programs for those prone to violence, and shelters for the victims of domestic violence...
...The National Commission on Children found that 32 million Americans, including 8.3 million children under the age of eighteen, were without health insurance coverage in 1991...
...Commonweal...
...If a family member is struck with a major disease these families are permanently impaired...
...Obviously, any serious dedication to "family values' ' would support parental leave legislation, which President George Bush recently vetoed while putting forth his own limited proposal...
...TIMOTHY D. BATES Timothy D. Bates is a member of the board of directors of the Family Foundation of North America, an independent fundraising corporation associated with Family Service America of Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
...Lastly, we must see that the knowledge and social services that enable families to care for themselves are made readily available...
...One of my friends counsels single women who head households...
...I see little evidence of a shift in values among most Americans...
...If we don't provide a basic level of income support, fewer families will escape poverty, and the children of those families will most likely be caught in the same trap...
...6. 9 October 1992 In his now famous comments on the TV character Murphy Brown, the vice-president suggested that these conditions are to a large extent voluntarily assumed, and that Murphy Brown's choice to be a single parent mirrors similar choices being made across the nation...
...We need to recognize some hard economic facts...
...Still, the Republican party's "family values" rhetoric, enunciated most volubly by Vice-President Dan Quayle, continues to focus on the symptoms of the problem—voluntary single parenting a la Murphy Brown, for example—and refuses to look honestly at the overall disease of family disintegration...
...Without help from government, the struggle to preserve "family values'' will surely be lost in the face of larger economic and social pressures...
...That plague is too real to be reduced to fodder for partisan politics...
...Americans must embrace a larger sense of "family" than that evoked by the image of "Ozzie and Harriet...
...Moreover, while these women are on welfare, the state pays for medical care, but once they take a minimum-wage job they lose that medical coverage...
...If we are to break the cycle of dependence and hopelessness afflicting so many Americans, we must deal with the real needs of today's families...
...She is increasingly dismayed by how difficult these seemingly everyday tasks are to master in today's world...
...Dan Quayle could do a lot more to help many Americans achieve the kind of family and values he claims to speak for...
...Consequently, the patients tend to be blamed while the plague goes uncured...
...These children are inherently "at risk...
...The Family Agenda has defined public policy areas where government can assist families and thus promote the social stability most Americans desire and children need...
...Most of the jobs available to my friend's clients are poorly paid...
...Approximately 13 percent of children and 9 percent of pregnant women are not covered...
...We need a health-care program that will aid, not discourage, parents who want to break out of poverty...
...The Bush administration wants to finance such a program with tax credits, but the families most in need do not have sufficient tax liabilities or disposable incomes to take advantage of this plan...
...Given their family responsibilities, few have the confidence that they will be able to maintain their jobs once they get them...
...we have had enough federal and state programs that inadvertently reward families for breaking up or mothers for remaining single...
...But even families not marred by violence or self-destructive behavior are finding it difficult to make ends meet...
...Instead of holding up the mythical perfect family in a way that divides us, political leaders need to speak out on behalf of needy individuals and their families wherever and however they exist...
...Her job is to help them learn the skills necessary to run a home and raise children...
...The ideal family of a mother and father, with one working and the other raising children, accounts for only 10 percent of our current family population, according to the Connecticut Council of Family Service Agency...
...Similarly, we need training for judicial and social service personnel about the nature and dynamics of child and spousal abuse...
...Our hit-and-miss system of medical insurance exacerbates family problems unnecessarily...
...Seventy-five percent of all American school-age children live in families where either both parents work or the sole parent works, and over 6 million of these children must care for themselves at least part of the day...
...However, if we are serious about "family values," and if we are going to do more than mourn or condemn their demise, we must invest in the family as it exists now...
...Let me provide a personal example...
...That means dealing with poverty, sexism, racism, and medical care...
...First, social service programs should be analyzed from the perspective of their potential impact on families...
...Almost to a person, my clients honor the old "Ozzie and Harriet'' family model Quayle and others say is under ideological attack...
...Our families need universal health care...
...Furthermore, the parents most at risk—minority women—also suffer from economic disCommonweal crimination because of their race and sex...
...Given these realities, especially as the baby-boomer generation takes on the responsibility of caring for their elderly parents, we need in-home support services, respite care, day care, and meals-on-wheels now more than ever...
...The Family Agenda I have outlined will be costly...
...According to data assembled for the'Tamily Agenda''—an evaluation of the current status of the family by the independent social-service agency, Family Service America—43 percent of those children who live with only their mothers grow up poor...
...Second, minimum levels of income, health care, nutrition, and shelter should be established and funded...
...A real commitment to families will require conservatives as well as those currently fed up with government inefficiencies to rethink their resistance to government activism...
...That is just one indicator of the present instability of the American family...
...Families where one or both of the parents must work cannot begin to provide adequate care when a family member becomes disabled...
...My clients would love to establish a stable relationship, where one parent could elect to raise children, rather than work...
...However, the pressures of day-today life in our country make that ambition increasingly unattainable...
...Many of her clients live on welfare, and the monthly check does not cover the costs of housing, utilities, and food...
...But as an attorney who often does divorce work, I know better...
...Alzheimer's disease, AIDS, and other disabilities disrupt families and force them either to quit work or to combine care giving with various part-time jobs...
Vol. 119 • October 1992 • No. 17
