All in the Family

...Its community context has to a great extent disintegrated...

...Ron was at first uncomprehending...

...a sympathetic ear was almost never available...

...Simultaneously, he announced the creation of a blue-ribbon commission to identify as many government programs as possible that could be transferred to the private sector—which is about as indifferent to family values as the President has been to his adopted son...

...If this act seems unbelievably offhand, their treatment of Michael gives the story credence...

...Finally he put his arm around his son's shoulders...

...The early 20th-century reformers hoped to prop up the traditional family by using the state to impose their own middle-class values on the immigrant working class—an objective not so very different than that of today's conservatives, despite an obviously different attitude about the benign potential of government intervention...

...In the first document he is lauded for his dedication to unbreakable domestic ties—"strong families are the foundation of society"—while in the second he is worshiped from afar by a son whose longing for his recognition was almost always frustrated...

...Hands-off government and hands-off parenthood may be logically compatible in the President's mind...

...Presided over by Meese, the DPC held high the standard of committed conservatism...

...Since the family was the victim of government forces—the courts and rule-writers, educational and social policy makers, public officials at all levels —it was necessary, according to Bauer's group, to make clear what the state should and should not (mainly, should not) do, based on some "home truths...

...Mothers and fathers who then decide to spend a good deal of time raising those children themselves rather than leaving it to others are demonstrably doing a good thing for those children...

...For Michael this had an added dimension...

...Are its shortcomings to be explained by intrusive government programs...

...he could rest assured that he was quoted with approval in it...

...When Nancy explained, he wanted to find the counselor and " kick his butt...

...Jane Wyman, with whom Michael lived after the breakup, preferred to have him off her hands as much as possible...

...Perhaps most deeply disturbing for him however, was being made to feel irretrievably sinful—not to mention fearful about his sexuality—after he was molested by a camp counselor at age seven...

...Not until this book went to press could Michael bring himself to mention the incident to his parents...

...Having been adopted caused him both to feel rejected by his natural mother and to wonder whether he was truly a member of the Reagan family—a unit that was intact for only a short time after his infancy...

...Within the DPC there were a number of working groups, one of which was focused on the family and headed by Gary L. Bauer, then Under Secretary for Education...

...At age 14, as a result of repeated conflicts with his mother, he moved in with the recently married Ron and Nancy...

...Though it was a pleasant household, he was not the recipient of much warmth...

...In each case the focus of political action has been on the symptom—family decay—rather than on the underlying cause: the dislocations brought about by industrial capitalism...

...The First Family, as depicted in On the Outside Looking In, falls way short of the domesticunit idealized in the Bauer group's report...

...Given the President'sreading habits, it is unlikely that he carefully studied this 66-page report...

...The absurdity of the question points to the untenability of the conservative position on the family...

...Michael Reagan is living proof of that dictum...

...When he asked that he be allowed to attend a nearby academy to which Nancy could chauffeur him, instead of boarding school, his father refused...

...Then there was the matter of his illegitimacy...

...He responded to all this by developing a knack for getting into trouble— failing at school, wrecking cars, running out of funds...

...He comments: "My adoptive parents were actors, skilled in the art of communication...

...Families who choose to have children are making a desirable decision...

...Through Bauer (now White House director for policy development), he issued an Executive Order requiring all Federal agencies to tailor their activities to fit with basic family values...

...Michael's eventual salvation lay in his encounter with one Colleen Sterns...

...Michael was adopted, he tells us, because Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan wanted to give their four-year-old natural child, Maureen, thepresent of a little brother...

...according to a Biblical passage he discovered as a boy, it would deny him entrance to heaven...

...She's too busy with Ron [Jr.] and Patti...

...Consequently, most families have been unable to control their own destinies...

...Yet children often require some guidance in managing their lives...

...Although Michael and his wife now maintain what he calls a Christian home, his early contact with religion invariably led to problems...

...Michael eagerly anticipated the weekends on his dad's ranch, devoted largely to proving the boy's capability with guns and horses...

...Jane Wyman showed momentary interest over the phone and promptly forgot about the matter...

...On visits home from school Michael had to sleep in the living room—he had no space of his own...

...Incidentally, his father had a similar reaction to Nancy...

...And it follows that the state should have essentially no role in family affairs beyond the enunciation of morality and the affirmation of parental authority...

...He may well also have spared himself perusal of Michael Reagan's On the Outside Looking In, where he figures more prominently and is cast differently...

...Ronald Reagan's enduring confusion in this area was evidenced yet again last September...

...A year and a half ago this group, consisting of three members of the Justice Department, a White House speechwriter and various other Reagan appointees in the Federal government, issued its report to the President...

...One or the other of his parents would, more often than not, answer with money if it was at all appropriate...

...Reviewed by Joseph E. Mick Professor of history, San Francisco State University Shortly after he named Edwin Meese III Attorney General in the late winter of 1985, Ronald Reagan created a Domestic Policy Council to replace the several Cabinet councils that had been handling issues ranging from agriculture to legal policy...

...I had finally met a woman who was willing to take care of my life, and I was delighted," he observes...

...Don't you think it's enough that she has opened up her house to you and invited you in...

...They married and are raising two sons...

...She emerges in this account not as a wicked stepmother but someone who put other interests, especially her husband, before Michael...

...For example: "Intact families are good...

...History gives us a dramatically different perspective...

...She never hesitated to send him to pre-schools, schools, afterschools, and summer camps as she single-mindedly pursued her career and occasionally introduced "fathers" into the household without warning...

...But when I look back on my life the episodes have to do with a failure to communicate.' In fact, what they communicated was indifference...

...In the mass society created by the Industrial Revolution, the household is no longer the scene of work and social tutelage...

...According to "The Family: Preserving America's Future," the 1960s and '70s saw Washington pursuing what was effectively an anti-family agenda that sought "a governmental solution to every problem government had caused in the first place...

...Jane Wyman's conversion to Catholicism deepened the rift between her and her ex-husband— with Michael, as usual, caught in between...

...Nancy was understanding and asked pertinent questions...

...This, the report claimed, was abruptly reversed in 1980 with the election of a new President by the American people: "He trusted them to manage their own lives...