Of course, it’s not possible for the federal government to guarantee each family a wonderful, healthy, semiretired mother-in-law who happens to live close by. But if we’re serious about family values, then we can put policies in place that make the juggling of work and parenting a little bit easier. We could start by making high-quality day care affordable for every family that needs it. In contrast to most European countries, day care in the United States is a haphazard affair. Improved day-care licensing and training, an expansion of the federal and state child tax credits, and sliding-scale subsidies to families that need them all could provide both middle-class and low-income parents some peace of mind during the workday — and benefit employers through reduced absenteeism.
It’s also time to redesign our schools — not just for the sake of working parents, but also to help prepare our children for a more competitive world. Countless studies confirm the educational benefits of strong preschool programs, which is why even families who have a parent at home often seek them out. The same goes for longer school days, summer school, and after-school programs. Providing all kids access to these benefits would cost money, but as part of broader school reform efforts, it’s a cost that we as a society should be willing to bear.
Most of all, we need to work with employers to increase the flexibility of work schedules. The Clinton Administration took a step in this direction with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), but because it requires only unpaid leave and applies only to companies with more than fifty employees, most American workers aren’t able to take advantage of it. And although all other wealthy nations but one provide some form of paid parental leave, the business community’s resistance to mandated paid leave has been fierce, in part because of concerns over how it would affect small businesses.
With a little creativity, we should be able to break this impasse. California has recently initiated paid leave through its disability insurance fund, thereby making sure that the costs aren’t borne by employers alone.
We can also give parents flexibility to meet their day-to-day needs. Already, many larger companies offer formal flextime programs and report higher employee morale and less employee turnover as a result. Great Britain has come up with a novel approach to the problem — as part of a highly popular “Work-Life Balance Campaign,” parents with children under the age of six have the right to file a written request with employers for a change in their schedule. Employers aren’t required to grant the request, but they are required to meet with the employee to consider it; so far, one-quarter of all eligible British parents have successfully negotiated more family-friendly hours without a drop in productivity. With a combination of such innovative policy making, technical assistance, and greater public awareness, government can help businesses to do right by their employees at nominal expense.
Of course, none of these policies need discourage families from deciding to keep a parent at home, regardless of the financial sacrifices. For some families, that may mean doing without certain material comforts. For others, it may mean home schooling or a move to a community where the cost of living is lower. For some families, it may be the father who stays at home — although for most families it will still be the mother who serves as the primary caregiver.
Whatever the case may be, such decisions should be honored. If there’s one thing that social conservatives have been right about, it’s that our modern culture sometimes fails to fully appreciate the extraordinary emotional and financial contributions — the sacrifices and just plain hard work — of the stay-at-home mom. Where social conservatives have been wrong is in insisting that this traditional role is innate — the best or only model of motherhood. I want my daughters to have a choice as to what’s best for them and their families. Whether they will have such choices will depend not just on their own efforts and attitudes. As Michelle has taught me, it will also depend on men — and American society — respecting and accommodating the choices they make.
“HI, DADDY.”
“Hey, sweetie-pie.”
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m home early to look after the girls while Michelle goes to the hairdresser. I gather up Malia in a hug and notice a blond girl in our kitchen, peering at me through a pair of oversized glasses.
“Who’s this?” I ask, setting Malia back on the floor.
“This is Sam. She’s over for a playdate.”
“Hi, Sam.” I offer Sam my hand, and she considers it for a moment before shaking it loosely. Malia rolls her eyes.
“Listen, Daddy…you don’t shake hands with kids.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” Malia says. “Not even teenagers shake hands. You may not have noticed, but this is the twenty-first century.” Malia looks at Sam, who represses a smirk.
“So what do you do in the twenty-first century?”
“You just say ‘hey.’ Sometimes you wave. That’s pretty much it.”
“I see. I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”
Malia smiles. “That’s okay, Daddy. You didn’t know, because you’re used to shaking hands with grown-ups.”
“That’s true. Where’s your sister?”
“She’s upstairs.”
I walk upstairs to find Sasha standing in her underwear and a pink top. She pulls me down for a hug and then tells me she can’t find any shorts. I check in the closet and find a pair of blue shorts sitting right on top of her chest of drawers.
“What are these?”
Sasha frowns but reluctantly takes the shorts from me and pulls them on. After a few minutes, she climbs into my lap.
“These shorts aren’t comfortable, Daddy.”
We go back into Sasha’s closet, open the drawer again, and find another pair of shorts, also blue. “How about these?” I ask.
Sasha frowns again. Standing there, she looks like a three-foot version of her mother. Malia and Sam walk in to observe the stand-off.
“Sasha doesn’t like either of those shorts,” Malia explains.
I turn to Sasha and ask her why. She looks up at me warily, taking my measure.
“Pink and blue don’t go together,” she says finally.
Malia and Sam giggle. I try to look as stern as Michelle might look in such circumstances and tell Sasha to put on the shorts. She does what I say, but I realize she’s just indulging me.
When it comes to my daughters, no one is buying my tough-guy routine.
Like many men today, I grew up without a father in the house. My mother and father divorced when I was only two years old, and for most of my life I knew him only through the letters he sent and the stories my mother and grandparents told. There were men in my life — a stepfather with whom we lived for four years, and my grandfather, who along with my grandmother helped raise me the rest of the time — and both were good men who treated me with affection. But my relationships with them were necessarily partial, incomplete. In the case of my stepfather, this was a result of limited duration and his natural reserve. And as close as I was to my grandfather, he was both too old and too troubled to provide me with much direction.
It was women, then, who provided the ballast in my life — my grandmother, whose dogged practicality kept the family afloat, and my mother, whose love and clarity of spirit kept my sister’s and my world centered. Because of them I never wanted for anything important. From them I would absorb the values that guide me to this day.
Still, as I got older I came to recognize how hard it had been for my mother and grandmother to raise us without a strong male presence in the house. I felt as well the mark that a father’s absence can leave on a child. I determined that my father’s irresponsibility toward his children, my stepfather’s remoteness, and my grandfather’s failures would all become object lessons for me, and that my own children would have a father they could count on.