Debate Social Policy and Single Motherhood: Replies
Young, Iris Marion
Jean Elshtain and Margaret Steinfels and I agree at least on one thing: too many children are poor, badly educated, at risk of being un- or underemployed, becoming substance dependent,...
...Jean Elshtain and Margaret Steinfels and I agree at least on one thing: too many children are poor, badly educated, at risk of being un- or underemployed, becoming substance dependent, criminal, or dead...
...Volunteers can only barely begin to fill these gaping holes in the American dream...
...Perhaps they favor making divorce more difficult, as some recommend, with a waiting period...
...Perhaps the carrot is a better idea: cash awards and medals for couples who get and stay married...
...But, of course, no one designed the patchwork of plural family living arrangements in the United States today...
...SPRING • 1994 • 273...
...There is no question, however, that the last two decades have seen more divorce and less marriage, though the rate of teenage pregnancy has not in fact increased...
...Elshtain and Steinfels throw up their hands at the absurdity of such a statement in these days "when state budgets are strapped, cutbacks are being ordered across the board...
...But my policy principles call for social investment (this word that Elshtain seems to find so hyperbolic), not draining handouts...
...But I also submit that most people most of the time are trying to meet their responsibilities to their families, friends, and coworkers...
...If the measure for single mothers is the income level of their children and the state of the schools, health clinics, and parks in the neighborhoods where they live, then this is a most unforgivable example of blaming the victims...
...This vague rhetoric seems to function as an excuse not only for doing nothing, but for not even thinking about what to do...
...It is hard to believe that Elshtain and Steinfels would forbid divorce...
...In some respects, it has always been with us...
...it is justice...
...We do not have to accept as given the sex segregation of women's work that helps keep those wages low...
...The form of the rhetoric, moreover, leaves the impression- that it's "they" and not "we" who have shirked responsibilities...
...This assumes that couples now rush into divorce without thinking, which is for the most part not so...
...The most that Elshtain's and Steinfels's calls for restoration of family values and responsibilities can mean practically is that public discussion promote the idea that intact twoparent families are better than other families...
...Their insistence that although women have a "right" to parent alone, their family lives are less valuable, moreover, is an affront to the worth and dignity of women who have tried marriage and found it wanting, are out on their own with their children, and are not interested in a new husband...
...Steinfels suggests that parents cannot assume that more money and personnel will make quality child care more available and affordable...
...Elshtain suggests that a condition for the creation of decent 272 • DISSENT Arguments jobs is that children be motivated to stay in school...
...We should, in the words of Elshtain, "create situations that do best for children," that is, promote intact two-parent families...
...Neither Elshtain nor Steinfels mentions the single most important cause of the economic disadvantage in which children of many single mothers live: low wages for women's work...
...Surely this is madness...
...Elshtain, too, suggests a kind of quid pro quo: if we are to see investment in dilapidated neighborhoods, building of new schools and houses, we need secure social institutions and children who are compelled by their parents to stay in school...
...Is a liberal society really to condemn these women, and if it does can it claim it is respecting them as equal citizens...
...Other such volunteer civic activities are led by the "forlorn bands of disconnected men" Elshtain imagines "roaming neighborhoods...
...Indeed, for all their strong language, I find neither offering any action...
...Many men run athletic and cultural programs for children, or volunteer in tutoring centers, drug-prevention, and skillsbuilding workshops...
...Since divorce in the United States is already painful and costly, especially when there are children, making divorce more difficult is not likely to reduce appreciably the number of divorces...
...Private industry should bear as much responsibility for this investment, moreover, as government does...
...Only a little reflection should suggest that precisely the reverse is true...
...Less often, perhaps, do people think about and meet their responsibilities to distant strangers, but here responsibility increases with social privilege...
...I do not understand why we cannot assume that it would help a great deal...
...Elshtain and Steinfels both claim that "we" have undertaken a "social experiment" in single motherhood that has "failed...
...Are these facts of nature...
...When middle-class, married couples refuse to support the local school system through a tax increase, complain about the quality of the schools, and enroll their kids in private school, are they behaving responsibly...
...What odd phrasing...
...If such a society-wide educational campaign were implemented, it might indeed have some measurable impact on marriage and divorce rates, but I submit not very much...
...Again, Elshtain and Steinfels would not force abortions, and I suspect that they would not force men to marry and live with the women they have impregnated...
...When bank executives refuse to make loans to homeowners and businesses in poor neighborhoods and invest instead in risky tourism ventures on the other side of the country, are they behaving responsibly...
...Topping the agenda for such discussion must be the fat public larder where we still see very little in the way of cutbacks: military spending...
...This is not a wasteful handout...
...it is also an unrealistic expectation, since male unemployment rates have been steadily rising in the last decade, and male wage rates have been falling...
...Public expenditures on street lighting and better transportation, along with private corporate decisions to reduce working hours without reducing pay, might enable more people to engage in more self-defined civic activities to improve their lives and their neighborhoods...
...The heroic activities of organizations like the Industrial Areas Foundation or the Cabrini Green Tenants Association, which Elshtain applauds, are very often led by single mothers...
...With the communitarian refrain, "strong rights entail strong responsibilities," Steinfels SPRING • 1994 • 271 Arguments suggests that it's about time the parents of those children did something, instead of sitting around waiting for handouts from the state...
...Once parents get off their duffs and build these institutions and discipline their children, then maybe we can talk about social support...
...But how shall we do that...
...Would they recommend punishing women who give birth out of wedlock as a deterrent to others, or punishing fathers who do not marry them...
...Calls for "secure institutions," restoring the "fabric of families," and living up to "strong responsibilities" are empty exhortations unless we specify just who should take responsibility to do what...
...According to the Center for Defense Information, Clinton's 1994 budget contains $340 billion in military spending, only $10 billion lower than Bush's 1993 budget...
...Thus I find Elshtain and Steinfels recommending virtually no social action to improve the lives of children...
...It is simple sexism to decide that the only way to pull the children of single mothers out of poverty is to get them live-in fathers...
...It is Elshtain and Steinfels who have their heads in the sand if they think that "private disinvestment" in the two-parent family has destroyed our schools and taken jobs away from the neighborhoods...
...Coupled with the scarcity or expense of child care, low wages make it rational for many women to stay on welfare...
...I wouldn't say that we should leave ourselves defenseless, or even unable to fight one imperialist war at a time...
...I submit that irresponsibility is randomly distributed across race, class, gender, and family form, and I agree that there is far too much of it...
...Compare this to $54 billion for education and social services, or $11 billion for community and regional development...
...Millions of single mothers nevertheless take jobs that enable them and their children only barely to escape poverty, if that...
...I completely agree with Elshtain that a vigorous and just society depends on the active participation of citizens in civic institutions of their own making, either not connected or only loosely connected to the state—neighborhood cleanup crews, parent councils in schools, volunteer social services, community arts and culture centers, cooperatives, political advocacy organizations...
...Despite communitarian complaints, I find no evidence that this sort of volunteer community organizing and service provision has waned in the United States in the last two decades...
...And what shall we do about women who give birth without being married...
...What we disagree on are the solutions to these problems...
...Are Elshtain and Steinfels really suggesting that single mothers (not all of whom are poor) or poor people (not all of whom are in families with one parent) are, as a group, more irresponsible than other people...
...American society has been severely damaged by three decades of private and public disinvestment in basic manufacturing, new and rehabilitated housing, bridges and rail lines, public education, adult retraining, and social services such as preventive health care and libraries...
...Decent schools, housing, infrastructure, decent jobs for all able to work, wage equalization, and affordable child care can come about only through significant levels of public spending combined with both coerced and voluntary efforts of private capital...
...This alternative is frighteningly close to the minds of some people in the current debate, but it doesn't sound like Elshtain or Steinfels...
...In his State of the Union Address, Clinton vowed not to cut another dime from military spending...
...Despite what I regard as a healthy level of civic activity in the United States among people of both genders and all races and classes, there is certainly need for more...
...We live in a time of a "responsibility deficit," some say, but I don't know the measure of responsibility levels...
...Public and private programs should be devoted to training women for higher wage jobs and raising the wages of traditionally female jobs...
...Americans must engage in a serious and prolonged discussion of public and private spending and taxation, with the aim of shifting resources from waste and quick profits to investment in people and neighborhoods...
...let's just take half of that $340 billion over the next five years and rechannel it into job-creating schools, day-care centers, new houses and apartments, steel, clean trains, parks, libraries, bridges and roads, and, yes, community organizing clearinghouses...
...If caring progressives treat them as such, then we are certainly doomed...
...churches, schools, community groups, perhaps occasional television ad campaigns should send out this message...
...She accuses me of resuscitating a separate spheres ideology that would keep women at home caring for children, yet scoffs at my call for the massive increases in state support for child care that would enable more mothers—and fathers—to work outside the home and volunteer, knowing that their children were cared for...
...Elshtain and Steinfels write as though I have called for more of the same tired old welfare policies in order to respond to the stresses of single motherhood and the economic disadvantage many children suffer...
...What do Elshtain and Steinfels propose that we do about the lives of children...
...Who are "we" who designed such a cruel "experiment...
Vol. 41 • April 1994 • No. 2
