I began. With a provocative statement and a provocative question. provocative statement the remarks I shall be making this afternoon. are unfair Invalid and incomplete at least in part. the provocative question this as you know, is the year of the child. Is it also the year of the family? As we seek to identify and to meet the needs of children are we also seeking to identify and meet the needs of mothers and fathers of grandparents aunts and uncles of relatives and friends or for that matter of daycare workers babysitter's social workers teachers youth workers and nowadays probation officers and policeman. All those to whom we today delegate by decision sometimes by default the responsibility for the crucial task that any society must perform if it is to survive and flourish. That is the process of making human beings human. For if the year of the child is not also the year of the parent the year of the family the year of daycare the year of preschool the year of school and I would add the year of the neighborhood and the year of flex time in the world of work. If it is only the year of the child alone. Then it will be yet another year of loneliness for Children and Youth they will be talked about rather than talked to looked at and alas even looked after more by a television set than by a human being. Will 1979 be the year of the child only in a media world. Mind you I'm not predicting. I'm only asking what will happen. What is already happening for the year is almost half over. What has been happening to Children parents and others who care for the young in 1979 the year of the child? The statistics for 1979 are not yet in but if the 1978 figures are any indication this situation is changing changing in the same familiar way. You know the statistics well now more single parent households fewer extended families, except. I might add among blacks and other minority ethnic groups here and there who for some reason. Don't go the way of the majority. More adults living alone more working mothers, especially of children under six and under three and let me stress here that I think one of the most constructive developments that we have had in this country in recent years has been the recognition that the larger half of the human race. Has capability to contribute to the world of work. That's not the issue. The issue is something else as you'll see. For example, the fact that there is no corresponding Trend observable anywhere as yet for fathers to stay home to take care of children or do the housework. In contrast, we are rapidly moving to a situation in which the majority of families will soon be to wage earner families. 45% nah more teenage pregnancies 1978 was a landmark year in two respects. It was last year that the mothers that the percent of mothers working became the majority most mothers now work. And it was also the year that we took the lead among the industrialized nations of the world in the rate of pregnancy among unwed teenagers were now number one. These are new highs to be sure but in a trend that began just after World War true steadily accelerating until 1970 when it began going up Skyrocket fashion or down depending on how you view these developments. But along with these familiar changes. A new trend has appeared. I cannot document it in hard figures, but I'm sure that it's there. Only a few years ago people in my position. We're spending hours on the telephone on the dictating machine and on the road trying to create an opportunity for telling the public about what was happening to families and children in our society. Today the situation is reversed. The problem is how to stay off the road long enough to respond to all the requests one has to decline. And some groups are so persistent that they won't take no for an answer. And these groups are of all kinds. Every National Organization from Obstetricians to Undertaker's wants an address on the family at its annual convention and every Magazine from Newsweek to midnight is planning a feature story on the subject and every major TV network is producing or planning a three-hour documentary on the family complete with all the latest statistics on family breakup dramatic close-ups in bedroom and bath and snappy and sometimes not so Snappy comments from the experts. Along with your favorite comedian disc jockey and the president's mother. Now it is instructive to examine how the major networks in our country choose to present. the family to the viewing Nation a number of such programs are currently in the works. But one major production is already on the record and some of you may have seen it it ushered in the year on NBC 3 hours of prime time between 8:00 and 11:00 in the evening on the day after New Year's. What kind of a picture did NBC choose to present and not to present? What did those very sophisticated producers judge that the American public needed and wanted to see and what was deemed inappropriate? Well, some of you already know the answers to the first question for you were among the millions who watched at least for a while before you switched off from sheer boredom. But the answer to the second half of the question what the network chose not to show is less readily available. Now, I'm in a position to give you a first-hand report on some of that that part of me that ended up on The Cutting Room floor. Which was of course most of what I had to say. How boring it would have been to the audience. I do not know but you are about to find out I see you grasp my meaning. Mind you my experience was not unique each of the commentators who appeared in those separated Snippets of a few seconds each throughout the three-hour program. I am sure. had presented a coherent point of view that of course it had taken more than the few fleeting seconds that the person appeared on the screen. In my case, I spent an hour before the cameras from 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. In a Washington hotel room and I can summarize the main points. I was making I think in a few minutes and for those of you who saw the program I assure you there will be no overlap. In other words, you will be hearing what the NBC directors concluded would not be of particular interest. Nevertheless, I think you will find it instructive. I spent practically all my time trying as succinctly and incisively as I could to Marshal evidence and argument showing. That the capacity of a family to stay together let alone to function effectively depends on how its treated by the rest of the society. Specifically I attempted to demonstrate how what was happening to families and children in our country was be and would continue to be increasingly determined by events into settings quite outside. The family those two settings are the neighborhood and the world of work. I spoke of the importance to families with young children, especially single parent mothers who now number one fifth of the nation's children are now living in single parent families. I spoke of the importance to families with young children of having someone to turn to for help in emergencies to spell them all to give them recognition for what they were doing is parents and to provide Aid and encouragement on a day-to-day basis not someone at the other end of a long distance phone or on the other side of town, but next door or down the street someone who could watch the kids for a few minutes keep an eye on the place where you went out for a while or bring over a hot meal when you were sick or exhaust I talked about what happens to families when a breadwinner loses his job and becomes unemployed in mind as well as in money. Or when you're a single parent mother. Of three kids and you've lost your food stamps under the new regulations. Your food stamps, which were your only means to put bread in the table since practically the rest of the all the rest of your welfare check went to pay the rent. Or when both parents not to mention single mothers go to work and cannot find satisfactory care arrangements for their child at a price they can afford or at any price at all. I spoke of the deteriorating relations occurring in families when working schedules make it impossible for parents to spend time with their children or with each other and of the Havoc wrought in the lives of families trapped in neighborhoods in which children can't be let outside at all and where it's dangerous even for adults to go out by themselves. I discovered to our surprise that in the paradise of Ithaca New York where I live there are such neighborhoods. I explained how parents while still feeling and being held responsible for their children were increasingly becoming powerless to influence their own child's experience other people in other places often complete strangers to the parents. We're in fact determining the child's behavior and development as a function of what was happening in the peer group are on the TV screen and especially in the schools the schools which through no doing of Their Own. Are turning into a major breeding ground of alienation vandalism and violence in American society more of that later. I pointed out how the growing separation between homeschool workplace and Community was creating a situation in which children were being deprived of close contact not only with parents but with adults in general and I underscored the awesome consequences of this fact for a species like ours for we are a special breed the behaviors required for our survival. The Mastery of language the acquisition of cognitive skills and learning how to live and work with others all these a child must learn from the adult members of the species. And it can't be just anybody. It has to be somebody special. specifically As a student of the growing body of knowledge and experience about Child Development. That's my job. There is one requirement that emerges as absolutely essential for normal just normal develop and that is the involvement of the child in progressively more complex activities with adults with whom the child has developed a strong Mutual enduring and irrational attachment. Somebody has got to be crazy about that kid. Now that's the quote that got on the air. What they left out. Is what came before after and over and over I'll say it again now patterns of enduring activity and irrational attachment between children and adults can only develop under a certain set of conditions. We call that set of conditions a family or we should regardless of who is there and who isn't. Because if we don't call them a family or treat them like a family they won't be able to act like a family for very long or even to continue to stay together. We are creating a society in which it is easier and less stressful to split families than to sustain them. And intelligent people are making the Adaptive decision. Just like individual human beings families cannot survive and cannot function unless the external conditions are right. For that reason in my comments, I emphasized most of all. in my talk to those three impassive TV cameras, I am for sized most of all the problems and programs both in the public and the private sector that had to be I argued directly and forcefully addressed if families were to be in able to stay together and to wield the magic power that only families possess of making and keeping human beings human not just children, but all of us throughout our lives to this very moment in this room, and Beyond for the ability to function as a human being to think. To build and to create in whatever sphere is forged and sustained. By those with whom our lives are most intertwined. In the past in the present. And in the years to come ahead of us. So I spent an hour talking about all of that and I didn't do it badly but somehow. for some reason the very talented producers directors at NBC who know their audience well found it necessary and managed to pick out only those two or three sentences in which I was not talking about the circumstances in which families live, but about the inner workings of the Family itself, and that's what got on the air. Not just from me. But from everyone else on the program a spotlight was on the family members themselves, their interpersonal and intrapsychic conflicts and Conquest their tribulations and triumphs with all emotions upfront, baby. a series of soap operas with comments from the sidelines by the experts a panel of psychologists psychiatrists and family specialists. We were told reassuringly as an audience. They've only seeing this for the first time. They don't know anything more about these families than you do. A series of soap operas with comments from the sidelines by the experts. Comments on the characters in each story their strengths and weaknesses that accounted for their personal failures or less frequently their personal success is against overwhelming odds. Except that this time the characters were real actual parents and children radiant or more often consumed with anger or paralyzing anguish struggling unsuccessfully to hold back their tears as the camera relentlessly came in for that inevitable close up. There they were on the screen before us and one should realize before their relatives the friend their neighbors. Our co-workers their bosses quite a few of the folks in town and perhaps most painful of all they saw themselves in their condition. That is one way in which we treat families in our society. The title of the program was perhaps more apt than its creators intended. It was called some of you will recall the American Family an endangered species. endangered indeed It is significant that the fellow townspeople of the families were not shown on the program nor were their co-workers or their bosses nor anyone else outside the Family itself. No neighborhoods. No office is no factories. No hospitals. No schools. No courthouses. No nurses. No doctors. No teachers. No lawyers. No policeman. No friends. No neighbors. No social agencies not even a community planning organization ink No programs, no recommendations. Not a word in 3 hours. About the circumstances of circumstances under which the families lived the conditions that needed to be changed the actions that had to be taken at the national or the local level. That's the way it is said to Media message. It's up to these people themselves to come to terms with their problem some do. mordaunt now I have dwelt on these three hours of Primetime not to point an accusing finger at television reporting on the contrary. The medium was presenting us with a very faithful picture of ourselves. the procedure the producers and the directors had I believe judged correctly what the American public wants to see and know about families and what they don't want to be reminded of There is a persistent pattern here and one that is deeply rooted in the American way of life. Once he's at best from across cultural perspective from that vantage point it emerges as a common theme. that Cotts that cuts across our fantastic diversity the variety of socioeconomic ethnic and religious groups and it makes them one. Makes us one people. We The Americans. It's a theme that's been noted by every Observer since de tocqueville. And its name will come as no surprise. individualism individuals it's a strong and as you can see healthy tradition. We believe that fundamentally people should take care of themselves and mind their own business. The Credo The individual is responsible for his own success at his own failure. If he makes it, congratulations, we all knew you had it in you if he fails too bad guess he didn't have what it takes. It's the deficit model. And it pervades our outlook on social problems. And programs if it's not the individual who's deficient then it's the family's not enough cognitive stimulation. Or it's not the family. It's the socio-economic or ethnic group. After all, they could do it if they only had to get up and go that's what we had to do. as a result before we are willing to help anybody up we have to put them down. Our welfare system is a case in point before you can get any help. You have to prove yourself inadequate first in writing five times over and you better have it notarized. To be sure most of those who apply for welfare don't have much difficulty in proving themselves inadequate contrary to some popular stereotypes. They are not typically healthy males hanging on the corner. the majority Are poverty-stricken mothers with young children? And the remainder are old and sick and when we speak of cutting welfare, that's who's getting knifed. for the most part But even after they have proved themselves. The focus of the system is on the individual not on the circumstances that produced the problem. Especially compared to other modern industrialized societies. We we Americans make few efforts at prevention. Our focus is on what we call problem children and problem families, especially the most inadequate of all multiple problem families. And we provide just enough help so that they can't really make it. and they don't and we say You know, we are the only modern industrialized Nation. It does that it doesn't give enough. That does not ensure and provide for example. Number one. We're the only modern industrialized nation that does not yet provide Health Services for any family with young child when you only one left. We are the only modern industrialized nation that does not ensure and provide a minimum income level for any family with young chop. No other one left we are the only modern industrialized nation that doesn't ensure and provide substitute care for children from families with working parents. And finally, despite the large-scale entry of women into the of child bearing age into the workforce. As I said now it's the majority of working mothers. We Remain the only modern industrialized society that does not guarantee an extended maternity leave following the birth of the child with pay. It's all right, the countries that do are all socialist countries and that's not for us. Well, yeah, but how about Switzerland? That hotbed of you know after all Lennon was there France West Germany? They provide the supports I was describing. So does our Northern neighbor that just voted conservative? And one thing you can be quite sure of is the conservatives aren't likely to remove these Family Sports. Why not? Why are other nations willing to pay for these things? Whereas we're not. We say we can't afford it. We have to keep inflation down. They say they can't afford not to. And some of them are poorer than we they say the social cost would be too great. But we don't keep our books that way social costs aren't counted. Not only are we not keeping up we're reducing. We're cutting daycare. We've cut down on food stamps. We've kept the same allotment. But in order to have it go around we've said you've got to deduct your welfare check before you can qualify for food stamps, which means that you got a whole group now sort of just above the bottom who doesn't have food stamps anymore. We're cutting on services. all of this as inflation Rises for those families How come how come we do that? After all, we're a generous Nation. Yes, we are a generous Nation. When things are good. for most of us when the economy's high in the 60s, we had a war on poverty. Things aren't so good. We have a saying when things get tough the tough get tougher. Back to rugged individualism and the deficit model. That's where we're at. What will be the consequence? Well, I'm a scientist not a prophet. All I can do is to tell you what has been happening. And what is likely to continue to happen. If we don't do something about it. If we don't change those conditions number one, the first thing that will continue to happen. Is that the gap between the rich and the poor? Which in our country always means? Between also means between Americans who are white and those were black that Gap will continue to widen as it has been for the last six years. more generally we are in danger of becoming in real danger of becoming a to class Society those who have credit cards and those who don't those who have a provable identity and those who don't. the last Refuge of democracy is a driver's license. If you drive here in America the other day, Senator Sam hayakawa of California was widely quoted. And I understand that many of you heard the quote. As having favored the controlling oil. Because he said let the prices rise. The poor shouldn't be riding in cars anyway, and the rich will be able to afford the price of gas no matter how high it rises. Now Senator hayakawa used to be a college professor and he wrote a famous book on semantics and as you see he knows how to use them. So this afternoon which Professor do you believe? Now mind you. I think Professor hayakawa was right. The rich will still be able to pay. We're gas still be able to buy food and they'll be able to send their kids to college if necessary by financing on inflation borrowing buying on credit those cards and paying back with cheaper dollars. What will a poor do? The poor whites as well as the poor blacks. Now they don't have the credit or the money to put down and as we have seen there now getting fewer benefits. What will happen to them to their families? To their children to their next Generation Well, we know the answer to that more of what is happening already. As you know, probably all of the things I talked about earlier are occurring most rapidly in families that are poor families that are black and they increase with the degree of urbanization. That's it. It's the mothers who are poor and black especially those living in low-income Center core of our Mage Nationals of our larger cities, for example, Of All Families living in central low-income sections in the central core of American cities Across the Nation the percentage of single-parent families 82 percent. It's these mothers who are most likely to be working full-time. they work because they have to and it is they who are most likely to be single parents and to have children in their teens and out of wedlock to be sure these Trends are substantially higher among non-whites than whites. But for those families residing in similar economic and social sites circumstances the rates of change are exactly the same the critical Factor. Therefore is not race, but the condition under which families live. Point I wish to emphasize however is that the general trend is not limited to the urban poor it applies to all strata of the society for example, middle-class families today in the cities in Suburbia. And in rural areas are changing in similar ways indeed in terms of such characteristics as the proportion of working mothers the number of adults in the home single parent families children born out of wedlock. So on the middle class family of today now resembles the low-income family of the early 1960s. Congratulations. We've made it And what about the children? Unfortunately statistics at a national level. And the status of the child are neither is comprehensive nor as complete as those on the state of the family for in our Census Data. It's the taxpayer who counts and gets counted lots of information about adults much less about children. We have to be indebted to the private sector for giving us information like this. Nevertheless the available data do suggest a pattern that strikingly parallels the trends observed for changes in the family specifically going along with shift in the structure and position. The family are changes in Industries reflecting the impaired well-being and development of children youngsters growing up in low-income. Families are of course at especially high risk of damage physically intellectually emotionally socially I have these documented here. I will just call attention to one or two. There's that now classic report of the committee of the Judiciary the United States Senate in which the title tells the story. It's called our nation's schools a report card a in school violence and vandalism the report document that the pattern is not restricted to big cities or slums as the title implies. It's a national phenomenon School vandalism is now as American as apple pie virtually every school has a security budget in many a security Force. Literally the handwriting is on the wall. In academic achievement, you're all familiar with the declining SAT scores. The latest are just out there continuing the same Trend and of course the same trend is also shown by those by the achievement scores for those not bound for college that is for high school graduates and elementary school graduates and despite the efforts of all of us clever statistical types to try to make those Trends going to go away by controlling for changes in the test for the fact that they're being applied to a different population or you name it. We can't get rid of them. a report from the US Office of Education documents areas of lower test scores and English writing literature vocabulary reading social studies mathematics list goes on natural science at the adult level study found 40 million adults 1 over 3 just have the minimum competence required to be effective citizens consumers wage earners or family members. Only 55 million were proficient in Reading Writing. That's Computation problem solving C30 14% equivalent to 16 and a half million were unable to make out a personal check correctly enough for a bank to process it thirteen percent among the 15 million adults were unable to address an envelope well enough to assure that the Postal Service could deliver it now that second one comes close to home. I fall into that category myself. Fewer and fewer of the letters I send. Get to their destination. The point is not irrelevant. In many different ways the American system is not functioning as efficiently as it used to. Let me put it more provocatively and more precisely. Among other places. I have done quite a bit of research in the ussr's you heard and as one who knows both societies, I regret to tell you that the United States is becoming more and more like the Soviet Union every day. Things don't work very well and for good reason. The reason has to do with a very changes we have been discussing. What I'm suggesting is that what has been taking place over recent years in our country is an unraveling of the social fabric. The isolation of families schools of neighborhoods communities a breakdown within and between the social contexts that make up the human environment. We are destroying the human ecology. Now what happens when the Ecology of a species is destroyed when the environmental conditions necessary to sustain an organism or undermine? Well, one of the first danger signs is a curious phenomenon adult members of the species begin to attack their own young maiming and sometimes killing their offspring. In our species we call it child abuse and you know all too well in this group. What's been happening there? Indeed as members of this organization know all too well. Since you were among the first, in fact, I think the very first documented systematically. the strange cruelty to one's own is not limited to the young but extends to the mate as well. The reason I suggest that we have so many battered children and battered wives. Is that we have so many battered families. They are the product of an eroding indifferent and even hostile human ecology. It's not just the American family. It's in trouble. It's our society as a whole. Cheers as you see I'm a bringer of all kinds of glad tidings. Well, I think it's time to talk about things that can be done. And I would call your attention to some changes. That I only alluded to are sort of hid between the lines and you may challenge some of these one is I made very explicit compared to five years ago. The family is now Salient. It's a topic of conversation in this land. Yak. Yak. Yak. Yak. Yak. Sure, you say it's rhetoric. It says the Bible. Got to be careful with rhetoric. It leads to dangerous things people start believing what they say. the deficit models being questioned I doubt whether many of you found it a sympathetic one. I used to say when people ask me what's going to happen things have to get worse before they get get better. Well things have gotten worse. I think we're about in my judgment. We're in danger of turning around. We're in danger of turning. I rocked we're beginning to question the very things that I've described to you. hand we can locate what some of the key areas are. I mentioned our study it's going on and I'll focus on the American data. If you ask about the circumstances that families identify, we have a sort of a series of questions that can be summarized in one question that's never asked in this form. What are the circumstances in your life that make it easier or harder for you to be the kind of parent you want to be? Stress number one the most intensive not the most pervasive is as you might expect if you don't have it. It's the worst thing not to have money. and era the proportion of families who don't have enough money to put food on the table provide shelter for their loved ones is unfortunately higher in this nation than it has any right to be but that's not the most intensive stress and pervasive stress most intense, but not the most pervasive. There's another that comes up in our data. That is very democratic. The rich the poor the black the white all talked about it. And you may be surprised what it is. It's conditions at work. It's conditioned at work particularly schedules. And most of the complaints and our data come from fathers. Who said I'll get a chance to be with my kids. The next area of stress is the neighborhood. I've talked about that. It's also one of the areas of support when you have it. Return to supports the most important source of support in our data. They were to that sort of surprised us. Although you'll chuckle when you hear them. We never expected. Number one when we ask families. What's the thing that makes it possible helps? You most to be the kind of parent that you want to be the answer turns out my kids my kids, you know, if it weren't for them, you know, sometimes I get discouraged and then you know, one of those things happen it just that your area. number two was equally surprising My wife my husband. my friend number three has an irony about it because it's been attacked in this country is one of the major sources for destroying the family the availability of satisfactory childcare Arrangements. Not want to make a lot of these because these were based on a pilot study and only two neighborhoods. We have 20 in the study in the main study. So they're only possibilities. What are the implications? The implications are two main near two major headings. I forgot to mention another of the major sources of support. Yes, I did but I didn't underline it. friends and neighbors friends and neighbors friends neighbors friends and neighbors relatives friends and Neighbors If relatives if they live near you friends and neighbors are no relatives living near boss. The message that comes out of these kind of data and other studies and I've summarized this material in a book called The Ecology of human development. Is the importance of building and strengthening informal support systems in formal support systems. Just as Soviet colleague of mine when I asked him why they discontinued the boarding schools said if I promise not to call them by name, you can't pay a woman to do what a mother will do for free notice the male chauvinism and all that the Russians have it bad. So if you're going to have an irrational relationship, which I'm saying is the essential professionals can't do that. It's unprofessional. And they should. Professionals have to be fair. Parents don't have to be fair. And their kids need them to be unfair. Kids also need somebody to be fair to you know, put things into perspective. And of course another name for being unfair is loving somebody it's unfair, you know, why me? Why you caused we need to build interconnections. We become a fragmented society in which the family is separated from the preschool from the daycare center from the school from the neighborhood from the workplace. We're all in pieces. We need to build those connections so that somebody else knows your kids besides a parent and an occasional teacher. What a funny society that way. There are other ideas I've talked and written about these are all ideas. That don't work. That is nobody's tried them to my knowledge a curriculum for caring and the elementary schools the fourth are in which every kid learns not about caring but does caring so that by the time kids are in high school and there's a problem and you need somebody you can call up and get a certified tested somebody to come to your home who needs experience with kids to pass this course and who knows how to play games who has fun who's experienced men as well as women. So that we have become a care and Society of carers rather than just workers. lots of other ideas But my judgment is once you know, it's like it's like Pandora's box once once you but you get the idea. We're great at thinking up new ways of doing things once we decide it's necessary. I think the principal thing we have to do is to decide it's necessary. And I'll close with what I regard to be as the major conclusion. We're reaching in our work and I've done braided it already. We have yet. to interview a parent Who was not deeply committed to his or her child? And I include in that parents who are abusers who said to us I wake up in the morning with the deathly fear of wondering when will I start beating my job and how can I keep from doing? That's a pretty terrifying statement. What we find is that families are doing more than is humanly possible under the circumstances. And what we need to do is to try to change the circumstances and not as we have been the family's. Thank you very much.