STAND BY FOR THE NON-EVENT OF THE YEAR
Alter, Jonathan
STAND BY FOR THE NON-EVENT OF THE YEAR It's 11 o'clock. Do you know where your facilitators are? by Jonathan Alter Surely you can understand the poor guy's feelings. After a hard day's work, he...
...Among the "key issues" are "encouraging families to spend more quality time together...
...The Journafs editorial simply helped boost the synthetic sense of crisis-a sense that paralyzes Washington by simultaneously exaggerating every issue's importance and creating the impression that it cannot be addressed without establishing yet another new government entity...
...This inequity should be changed...
...At least economic policy is guided by the commonly shared notion that inflation is bad...
...Several "facilitators" suggested that "family impact statements" be required of all legislative bills and regulations...
...In an attempt to placate the millions of Americans who have made other arrangements, Tucker trotted in liberals who maintained that homosexuals, communal partners, and others with "minority lifestyles" could be families too...
...Professional family facilitators" told hearings that a single person, living alone, could constitute a "family...
...Jonathan Alter is a Washington writer...
...Finance training films for individuals trying to become families...
...After their favored points of contention-abortion and ERA-were ruled out of order, they concentrated on trying to impose a strict definition of the family on all conference discussions...
...This politically harmless contention helped him frame issues in appealing terms...
...His name is John Carr, and he was appointed to replace Fleming...
...It offers an incentive to shunt Granny off to loneliness and mistreatment, while penalizing those who have the decency and love to keep her home...
...Carter said there "was no more urgent priority" than to "adopt a family policy...
...It's no surprise that much of the conference agenda planning is based on a 1976 Califano memo that says,"The most severe threat to family life stems from unemployment and lack of adequate income...
...Medicare provides subsidies to lock up your grandmother in an institution, but not to care for her at home...
...The Journal didn't get bogged down in specifiCs about what "action" the Office for Families might engage in...
...If the fleming debate sounds superficial (no one accused her of being incapable, just black and divorced), it was Socratic inquiry compared to the next argument over how one defines a "family...
...by Jonathan Alter Surely you can understand the poor guy's feelings...
...the most dynamic consensus in "family policy" is that people should be happy...
...During initial rounds of hearings held last year in various states, where 2,000 people "testified" and delegates to the final hearings were elected, various rightish "pro-family" groups with names like Moral Majority and Eagle Forum tried to take OVer the conference...
...He'll soon discover what conference veterans already know, that endless debate over definitions has a most welcome side effect: it limits the time available to discuss anything specific, like whether new laws should be passed, or old ones repealed...
...That's the story of the White House Conference on Families this year...
...After a hard day's work, he sits down to read the paper, dog at his feet, wife at his side...
...Current reelection ads show the President helping Amy with her homework...
...The conference press office points with pride to a slate of "key family issues," drafted by the South Dakota delegation, as the sort of vital business to be discussed...
...Cupcake," the guy says, "it isn't inflation or Iran that's ruining this country...
...It's the crisis of the family...
...Provide a meeting room for families visiting Washington...
...Another distinct family issue to be discussed is care for the aged...
...About the only segment of the population sure to be served by the conference is the facilitators, who want more government money poured into their ambiguous occupations...
...Eleanor Smeal, director of the National Organization for Women-one of the liberals who triumphed by getting substantive issues like abortion and ERA ruled out of order-says the final recommendations will be just "another study to gather dust...
...The first thing he sees is a feature article about three lesbian unwed mothers raising their mulatto children in a geodesic dome...
...Facilitators at the initial hearings repeatedly proclaimed that th...
...Why say, "This tax is regressive," when you can say, "This tax hurts the average family...
...Recently the Journal noted in an editorial that Carter had created an "Office for Families" in the new Department of Health and Human 'Resources...
...Here You see the amorphous nature of trying to frame government initiatives in "family" terms...
...Barry Jagoda, a former Carter media advisor and organizer of other conferences, explained: "What's the best thing for a consensus politician like Carter to do with any question...
...Conferences are allegedly called for the purpose of generating innovative ideas on legislation and policy (after all, the legislature is already assembled to handle the details), but if they never quite get around to that, the White House usually considers it a mark of success, not failure...
...Tucker's fighting to keep the definition quagmire off the final agenda...
...If by that Califano meant that being out of work or poor makes people living with other people miserable, he's right...
...Yet six months later," the Journal said sternly, "that office has no director, only one professional, and no funds for action...
...Luckily, there is still a white Catholic man with an intact family in America...
...Fleming quit...
...This would lead, no doubt, to the Weekly After-Dinner Monopoly Game Encouragement Act of 1980...
...Medicare's structure not only provides them with the means to do so, but a ready excuse...
...This policy is transparently foolish...
...Their definition limited family members to those related by blood, adoption, or marriage...
...Conference officials hope for some kind of resolution condemning this policy, but if they get it, it's likely to be watered down...
...A new military draft, for example, would free up a room for rent...
...Most important, debating the definition will prevent a confrontation with the conference's seminal flaw: if public policy-makers can't even decide whether any particular form of cohabitation is desirable or undesirable, how can they possibly determine what things government action should encourage or discourage...
...Refer it to c.ommittee for 'discussion...
...The crisis of the family may not strike you as the central issue of our times, but you'll start hearing that argument any day...
...Top Floor for Rent The vagueness of family policy is indicated in the sorts of "programs" proposed during the initial conference hearings...
...of course, but not because of its impact on the family-rather, because it is unfair...
...Presumably, this would-in addition to enriching the facilitators with study grantsalert families to impacts they might otherwise overlook...
...Harvard sociologist Joseph Featherstone points out that ten years ago, when the baby-boomers were still in their teens, social service professionals focused oh children's affairs...
...Now that the babies are having babies, universities and thinktanks increasingly see "the family" as their entree to federal grants...
...She was Patsy Fleming, a divorced black mother...
...No doubt it will be the story next year, too, during the long-awaited W.hite House Conference on Feelings...
...But he shouldn't feel bad...
...Have you hugged yourself today...
...Meanwhile the conference's political clout went to its chairman, former Arkansas Congressman Jim Guy Tucker, who was an early Carter supporter and itching to stage a comeback after losing his state's Democratic senatorial nomination to David Pryor...
...Facile Facilitators Even members of the conference's bwn advisory board make no pretense of expecting any accomplishment...
...A number of "experts" who call themselves "professional family facilitators" told hearings that a single person, living alone, could constitute a "family...
...Of course, it makes people living in caves miserable too...
...One of the few specific issues likely to be addressed is the "marriage tax," which forces married couples to pay more taxes than unmarried ones in identical situations...
...Have you hugged yourself today...
...They've even gotten to The Wall Street Journaf...
...traditional family began breaking up in the 1960s...
...Holding the conference was a Carter campaign promise...
...The likely level of debate was indicated early on, when the first conference director was named...
...Are we to take the next step and assume that economic prosperity, which helps every individual, is "good" for "families...
...Teams of consultants could fan out across America, quantifying the square footage impacted...
...Carter image strategists, informed sources say, decided to keep the family issue prominent when the chief renomination opponent turned out to be a man whose wife lives 400 miles away from him...
...This month, the White House Conference on Families will stage $3-million worth of crisis pronouncements in hearing-like assemblies around the country...
...No one will say this with the cameras rolling, but there is a large constituency of people who want to dump Granny...
...The early 1960s were one of the greatest periods of prosperity in our history...
...It's not the way we want it, dearie, but what else can we doT') Ending the subsidy for nursing homes, in many people's minds, would make the quality of family life decline...
...at 4 o'clock we'll all meet back at our office...
...Then-HEW secretary Joe Califano insisted that a white Catholic man with an ideal family be named co-director to balance the shocking notions Fleming represented...
...He'll probably lose...
Vol. 12 • June 1980 • No. 4
