Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes
- Book Review,
by MARY EBERSTADT
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
"Why are millions of American kids -- almost one in four boys, according to the latest estimates -- taking drugs to alter their behavior, with millions more said to stand in need of that same regimen? Why . . . are depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders apparently skyrocketing among children and teenagers? What might help explain . . . the millions of American (and European) juveniles now at risk for overweight and obesity? What does the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases -- some of them incurable -- mean for the present and future health of today's teenagers? And . . . what exactly is at the melancholy core of current popular juvenile culture, especially what is dearest to them of all -- their music?"These are the questions conservative social commentator Mary Eberstadt poses in the opening chapter of Home-Alone America. They're good questions, and Eberstadt's general answer -- that all these pathologies are the result of too many children living in an "absent-parent home" -- is one that no reasonable person should dismiss out of hand. Home-Alone America contains some truly riveting chapters on the explosion in diagnoses of mental disorders among school-age children and the dizzying overuse of prescription drugs to treat them. Eberstadt's readings of contemporary music lyrics are surprisingly nuanced and are eye-opening for the as-yet-uninitiated. She peppers the book with statements that speak volumes about the perversity of life in middle- and upper-middle-class America today: "Yesterday's children -- which is to say, today's adults -- enjoyed the luxury of being considered 'normal' in ways that today's children increasingly do not," she points out, noting that the epidemic of behavioral disorders among children may result from the altered perspectives of observers. Parents who don't spend much time with their kids and the schools that do, she says, may simply have developed a much lower tolerance of childish behavior and an increased need to alter it through medication. Eberstadt also has much of interest to say about the "unintended incentive" for a student to be diagnosed with a "learning disability" (in order, for example, to get extra time to take the SATs). This may, she says, shed some light on the pervasiveness of "learning issues" among the rich and anxious: "It is the country's most exclusive and competitive schools that register the highest rates of learning disability," she writes. And she's great in portraying the double standard exhibited by many pediatricians who are quick to prescribe stimulants, antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds but loath to give antibiotics, because they fear the effects of over-prescription.But Eberstadt, unfortunately, isn't just a concerned chronicler of today's mad social scene. She is an ideologue, a crusader against day care, working motherhood, divorce and child illegitimacy. (In earlier work, she passionately defended the "natural family" against such threats as "contraceptive sex.") As an ideologue, she doesn't show much interest in how real people live or think about their lives. And like countless other conservatives, she's willing to misconstrue the results of recent social science studies to underscore her arguments against day care.When Eberstadt talks about day care and the families who use it, she can get really nasty. She brands as "separationists" those who don't revile other-than-mother care. The imagined unhappiness of a child in day care -- "the chronic low-intensity sadness of a yearning baby who just plain misses her mother day in and day out" -- is as acute to her as the pain of a child whose parents abandon her altogether. By this logic, Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy and John Allen Muhammad (all of whom once experienced some form of parental loss or abandonment) can be mentioned in the same rhetorical breath as . . . your children and mine, if we happen to work or change babysitters, or are callous enough to divorce or use day care. Eberstadt isn't the first writer to so grossly conflate short-term separation of the afterschool-program variety with out-and-out neglect and abandonment. Popularizers of attachment theory have been doing it ever since the British psychoanalyst John Bowlby first described the psychological devastation of children left orphaned by World War II. The problem here is, though, that Eberstadt's catastrophizing ends up casting doubt not only on the passages of her book where she castigates working mothers and the users of day care; it also undermines all the rest. In the tale she weaves of home-alone America, Eberstadt is an unreliable narrator -- seductive but, ultimately, untrustworthy.It's too bad that Eberstadt's marked right-wing bias will most likely lead left-leaning readers to denounce or ignore her altogether, while her raw animus toward working mothers will provide fodder for the worst kinds of "family values" demagogues. Despite what appear to have been loftier intentions, she has merely ended up providing new ammunition for the Mommy Wars. Reviewed by Judith Warner Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
From Booklist
As if women didn't have enough to worry about trying to decide on the correct balance between careers and motherhood, and then worrying about their decisions, Eberstadt maintains that working mothers are responsible for rising juvenile delinquency, underperformance in school, childhood obesity, and a host of other maladies. To her credit, she doesn't let fathers off the hook, but mothers are seen as the main culprits. Citing research detailing the adverse impact on children of absent parents, Eberstadt makes a passionate, convincing argument that Americans have focused too much attention on the needs of adults. Nearly half of all children have no fathers in the home, and more than half under the age of six have working mothers, leaving young children to fend for themselves in day care, where they are exposed to all manner of illnesses and bad behavior. The results are children who act out in various ways and a society that drugs them or ignores them. She offers no "snappy solutions" but strongly urges parents to spend more time with their children. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
James Q. Wilson, Wall Street Journal
The great and unarguable theme...is that families are a very good thing and parental care is of decisive importance...
Rich Lowry, syndicated columnist
Mary Eberstadt has written an unwelcome book. That doesn't make it any less important or less necessary.
Edward Wyatt, New York Times
...Eberstadt does not apologize...
Myrna Blyth, National Review
[An] important, thought-provoking book.
Kelly Jane Torrance, Washington Times
Home-Alone America is a fine first salvo in what may be a changed war.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
A book that should be read by every concerned parent, pastor, and policy maker.
World Magazine
...[u]rges all adults to think about the needs of children, and some to make drastic changes...
Susie Currie, Weekly Standard
Goes way beyond the headlines to show the effects of absent parents on nearly every area of children's lives.
Maggie Gallagher, syndicated columnist
An intense meditation on what matters most...
Rich Lowry, syndicated columnist
Mary Eberstadt has written an unwelcome book. That doesn't make it any less important or less necessary.
Book Description
Why are there so many troubled kids these days, diagnosed with learning disabilities or behavioral problems? Why is child obesity out of control? Why are teenagers contracting herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases at unprecedented rates? In Home-Alone America, scholar Mary Eberstadt offers an answer that’s widely suspected but too politically incorrect to say out loud. A few decades ago, most children came home from school to a mother who monitored their diets, prevented sexual activity or delinquency by her mere presence, and provided a basic emotional safety net. Most children also lived with their biological father. But today, most mothers work outside the home, and many fathers are divorced and living far away because society promotes adult fulfillment at the expense of our children. Too many kids now feel like just another chore to be juggled—dropped off at day care; handed over to a nanny; left in front of a television or a computer; and often simply home alone, with easy access to all kinds of trouble. Eberstadt offers hard data proving that absent parents are the common denominator of many recent epidemics, including obesity, STDs, mental health problems of all kinds, and the increased use of psychiatric medication by even very young children. Drawing on a wide range of medical and social science literature as well as popular culture, she reopens the forbidden question of just how much children need their parents—especially their mothers. Home-Alone America issues a radical challenge to the way America’s kids are being raised. Like The Bell Curve or The Nurture Assumption, it’s a controversial book that many will disagree with, but no one can ignore.
About the Author
Mary Eberstadt is a part-time research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and consulting editor to Policy Review, the critically acclaimed journal of conservative thought. Her essays and reviews have also appeared in the Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, and Commentary. She is married to the writer Nicholas Eberstadt and has four children.
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