"If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all." --Pearl S. Buck

he preceding few chapters have already marshaled an overwhelming array of current statistics which illustrate the magnitude of misery among adults and children in America at the close of the 20th century. As all the recent demographic data along with economic and public policy trends in the United States indicate, high poverty rates and moral chaos are and into the foreseeable future will remain a persistent feature of this nation's economic and social landscape. American ultra-capitalism itself is the primary cause of family and moral breakdown and the destruction of positive social values in America. What else could be the result of a belief system that teaches the supremacy of greed and the divinity of cash? Such an evil system simply has a fundamentally anti-social, anti-community, and anti-family character.

The American system of extreme capitalism which permits -- and even lauds -- the unfettered functioning of the so-called "free market," irrespective of its destruction of the social fabric, has proved to be the most ruthless and destructive enemy of the family. While "family values" may be promoted by opportunistic politicians to cash in on the great value placed on the family by ordinary Americans -- like the masses of people everywhere in the world -- this should not be confused with any attempt by these same politicians or the government as a whole to promote anti-poverty public policy in order to keep American families functioning as physically and spiritually healthy basic units in the society.

Like everything else under U.S. ultra-capitalism, the family is valued only to the extent that it supports and reinforces the profit system. Market values destroy family and moral values -- not merely because of the level of poverty which large numbers of persons are forced to endure, but even more, because of an anti-social cultural climate which actually promotes the notion that "greed is good," and that getting rich is the primary goal for everybody. Within such a context, where are the values of kinship, of community, of public good? What place has altruism, friendship, spirituality, aesthetics, love or even decency? Well, as Dana Mack, a scholar at the Institute for American Values, states in her book The Assault on Parenthood, American culture itself is "family-hostile, child-hostile culture."

It is very important to stress that ever-growing economic pressure on families with children, particularly young families and single parents, is at the heart of all kinds of social problems in America. Family time is diminishing steadily as people are forced to work harder and many more hours just to keep up with rising costs. Millions of American families are surviving these days, just barely, by holding down three, four or sometimes even more part-time jobs and working increasing amounts of overtime. These families struggle to make ends meet, knowing that they are but a couple of paychecks away from disaster. Because of all the rigid economic pressures, American parents are now devoting much more time to earning a living and much less time to their children than they did a generation ago.

Adequate time with parents is critical for the development of every child, but over the last three decades there has been a very sharp decline in the United States in the amount of time parents can spend caring for their children. According to Stanford University economist Victor Fuchs, American children have lost ten to twelve hours of parental time per week since the 1960s. In 1965, American parents on average spent approximately thirty hours a week with their kids. By 1985, parent-child interaction had dropped to just seventeen hours a week. By 1990, parents were, on average, available ten hours less per week to their children than they were in 1980 and forty percent less than they were in 1965. This time has been squeezed mainly by the rapid shift of mothers into the labor force and most of all by an increase in the number of hours required on the job. Such a drastic reduction in parents' free time has had, of course, an extremely negative impact on American children.

Americans are working harder today than ever. Now the average American worker puts in six more hours per week than two decades ago. This amounts to almost 300 additional work-hours per year. A 1995 study by the Families and Work Institute shows that only fifteen percent of working women with school-age children want to work full time, although seventy-five percent currently do so. A 1990 Yankelovich poll found that fifty-seven percent of mothers would give up working indefinitely if they no longer needed the extra money for the family. In Los Angeles and Orange counties, California, local survey-takers found forty percent of fathers and eighty percent of mothers haunted by anxiety about spending too little time with their children and wishing they could quit their jobs. Despite these findings, conservative spokespersons continue to blame "feminism" for the rise in the number of working mothers, and to target feminism in their social critiques, rather than poverty. ...

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