PBS: Think Tank: Transcript for "The State of the Earth"

« Back to The State of the Earth main page

Transcript for:

The State of the Earth

Think Tank Transcripts: Science and Religion

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, arecipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen,bringing better, healthier lives to people worldwide throughbiotechnology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I'm Ben Wattenberg. The current welfaredebate has focused attention on single mothers. But that's notenough. What about the fathers?

Joining us to answer this difficult question are DavidBlankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values andauthor of 'Fatherless America -- Confronting Our Most Urgent SocialProblem'; Amitai Etzioni, university professor at George WashingtonUniversity and author of 'The Spirit of Community -- Rights,Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda'; Heidi Hartmann,director and president of the Institute for Women's Policy Researchand a recipient of a 1994 MacArthur Fellowship Award, the so-calledgenius grant, for her work in the field of women in economics; andElijah Anderson, professor of sociology at the University ofPennsylvania and author of 'Streetwise -- Race, Class and Change inan Urban Community.'

The topic before this house: The sins of the fathers. This week on'Think Tank'.

Is the American family in trouble? In-house fathers, married andunmarried, are a diminishing species. Twenty-five percent ofAmerica's children are now being raised by their mothers alone. Let'slook at some father figures. Illegitimacy rates are rising steadily.In 1960, 5 percent of all babies were born out of wedlock. Today therate is almost 30 percent, and the rate in the black community isalmost 70 percent. Those out-of-wedlock births make up nearly a thirdof the children in single-mother households. But the majority offatherless families are the result of divorce, separation andabandonment.

These facts have consequences. Children growing up infemale-headed households are much more likely to have a child oftheir own before age 20, to drop out of high school, to live inpoverty and to commit crimes. In fact, 60 percent of America'srapists and 72 percent of adolescent murderers grew up without aresident father.

Why is this happening? What can we do about it? Let's go aroundthe horn once, starting with you, David Blankenhorn. Why? Why is ithappening?

MR. BLANKENHORN: It's happening because we've changed our minds onthe basic question: Do children really need fathers? We have become asociety that really doesn't know the answer to that question anymore.And so when we have 40 percent of the children in the country todayliving apart from their father, we are passive and we don't have aculture of fatherhood that requires and expects responsiblefatherhood any longer.

MR. WATTENBERG: Heidi Hartmann?

MS. HARTMANN: I think the reasons are primarily economic. I thinkwe've seen a tremendous increase in the economic independence ofwomen. They no longer need to marry to be able to surviveeconomically. And if economics is not going to be the reason formarriage, if women don't have to be forced into marriage just tosurvive, then we need to find other motivations for marriage andother ways of maintaining ties between parents and their children,even outside marriage.

MR. WATTENBERG: Eli?

MR. ANDERSON: I would tend to agree with Heidi. I think thateconomics is a very important piece to the extent that people havejobs and opportunity. Men, they tend to form families, I think. But Ithink jobs and economic opportunity is just a big, big part of it.And when you have increasing poverty the way that we do, we've got tounderstand that that's related to that.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right. Amitai?

MR. ETZIONI: I see a coming together of two trends: the generaldestruction of the family, the devaluing of children, the decline ofparental responsibility, and the destruction of all authority figures--from labor leaders to priests, from presidents to the press, thedestruction of authority. Both of them cross each other intofatherhood.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, let me -- Heidi Hartmann and ElijahAnderson, you are both talking about economics and jobs, but seem tobe saying something different. You are saying because women havejobs, that encourages fatherlessness. And you are saying becausepeople in poverty don't have jobs, that encourages poverty. Now, isthat a contradiction there?

MS. HARTMANN: We probably both agree on both points.

MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I'm saying that what we see right now is thefact that so many jobs are going out of the country, we -- our bigcities -- are in the throes of deindustrialization. Many of thesejobs are leaving cities, going to suburbs, non-metropolitan America.They're going overseas. When that happens, it has an impact on theavailability of jobs in the inner city. So many inner-city youngblack people lacking skills, lacking education, lacking opportunity,don't form families. But yet many of them have the same sexual needsas people have always had, and these get realized, but when babiescome, people don't form families. I mean, that's a big part of it. Ithink -- going along with what Amitai said, I think that a lot of theother pieces fall into place. When you don't have jobs and you don'thave economic opportunity, authority structures, values with respectto families tend to become shakier, I think.

MS. HARTMANN: Well, I think the two points are related. Just tosay that the economic benefits of marriage are reduced for women whenthe men do not have good jobs, I think that's the point that Eli hasbeen making. And I focused on the access to jobs by some women ontheir own, so that they need the men's job less. Or if the men's jobis not available, at least they can still have a child and still forma family.

MR. BLANKENHORN: I just think it's real common in the policydebate especially to give an economic interpretation of this. Ireally think it's fundamentally mistaken. We have the highest divorcerate in the world. We have a 31 percent rate of out-of-wedlockchildbearing. We have almost half of the children in the countryspending a big part of their childhood apart from their fathers. Thisis way beyond the unemployment rate. It's way beyond -- you know, ifmore jobs and more affluence were going to strengthen family life, wewould be a much different society today. The essence of this, Ithink, is a cultural shift in our generation. We've changed our mindsabout what it means to be a husband, a father, a wife, a mother.We've changed our minds about the institution of marriage. And yes,economics matters, but I think it's a fundamental mistake to --

MR. WATTENBERG: Do you think, David --

MR. BLANKENHORN: -- dwell on the economic aspects of this --

MR. WATTENBERG: Right, right, but --

MR. BLANKENHORN: -- to the exclusion of the culture.

MR. WATTENBERG: But do you think that when people get married --and you stressed the divorced and the abandoned and the separated, asopposed to the out-of-wedlock births -- that when guys get married,in the back of their mind they're saying, 'Well, I'm going to have akid and then split'? I mean, when you say that's the culture, mysense is anybody I know who's getting married is not getting marriedwith that in mind. They're getting married with sort of traditionalfamily values in mind and then something happens.

MR. BLANKENHORN: Well, first of all, 30 percent of the childrenborn now are born to never-married parents. And the fastest-growingfamily trend in America today is out-of-wedlock childbearing. It'sthe fastest thing happening out there. It's growing faster amongwhites than among non-whites. It's growing faster among people who'vebeen to college than people who haven't. And so, you know, loss ofblue-collar jobs, an unemployment rate of -- what is it now -- 8percent, this does not explain this fundamental civilizational shiftthat we have experienced in this generation over whether or notchildren deserve fathers and whether or not we have standards of maleresponsibility on this issue. To drive it down to unemployment, Ithink -- you know, of course it matters, but I think we miss thefundamental if we don't understand this essentially as a culturalquestion.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let's get Amitai in here for the communitarianview of this.

MR. ETZIONI: Clearly there are economic factors, but even there,it works both ways. When you break up a family and you create twohouseholds and you then have more income than before, you increasethe costs. So it's not only the economy that's driving up the breakupof the family; the breakup of the family has poverty-producingconsequences. But I'd like to talk for a moment about the importanceof having fathers, because there's some very interesting sociologicalstudies of. And basically what they argue is somewhat sophisticated.

They argue that for a child to grow up properly, it needs twoengines. One is to produce basically love and security andreassurance, and the other to foster achievements, to reach and breakup, in effect, the comfortableness, the coziness, and that you needthese two engines to work hand-in-hand. Now, it's not necessary, andnot often in other societies did it work this way, that the fatherwas the achievement or disciplinarian and the mother was the warmthand affection. But the separation of roles seems to be essential. Andone more thing, that the two will be in correlation with each otheror fighting each other. So well-developed children have both a loveengine and an achievement engine and a correlation between the two.

MR. WATTENBERG: Heidi, can you have a successful child withoutthose factors?

MS. HARTMANN: Well, I think you can, but you do it throughcombining them in the same parent or relying on other adults -- thegrandmothers, the grandparents, the teacher. And I think manychildren obviously have succeeded coming from single-parent homes. Ithink I want to--

MR. WATTENBERG: Are you distressed about this diminishment of thenumbers of children or rates of children without fathers?

MS. HARTMANN: I am distressed about what David calls the failureof fathers to take continuing responsibility for their children. Ithink, though, that some of the cultural change that we all seem tobe regretting these days has some positives. I think for people toescape oppressive marriages, to escape alcoholism or drug addictionof a spouse, to escape violence, these are all positive culturalvalues which women put up with for their whole lives because they sawin the past no escape from these marriages. So there's a positiveside to it as well as a negative side.

MR. BLANKENHORN: The abusive and violent and alcoholism, drugabuse, this accounts for a relatively small fraction of childrentoday living apart from their fathers. Most of it comes from parentswhere there's not violence and abuse. They just don't get alongtogether, and A) they never got married in the first place or, B)most marriages today end in divorce. So it's just wrong to say a 40percent rate of fatherlessness today is okay because we want peopleto be able to escape abusive relationships. Yes, we want them to, but40 percent fatherlessness doesn't come from cases of, you know,ax-murdering and drug abuse and violence. The numbers don't add up.

MR. ETZIONI: But there's other ways of being repressive. I didn'texpect to find myself on the side of Heidi here, but let me say thatthere are other ways for men to be oppressive to women without wavingan ax. So what we need is not a simplistic return to the old family,but we need a new family where we have equal partners, in whichpeople will both assume their roles and supplement and complementeach other --

MR. BLANKENHORN: Which is what we have today among most marriedcouples. If you do the interviews and look at the clinical evidence,married women today will say, 'I get a much better deal from myhusband than my mother got from my father.' Fathers today -- marriedresidential fathers are more involved in child-rearing. They do morework in the home, they are more emotionally expressive. They telltheir children they love them. They do all the things that we wantthem to do under a companion, more egalitarian model of marriage. Theproblem is their ranks are thinning every year. And so this is not agender role issue any more than it's an economic issue.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask, Eli, you commit sociology on theground. That is your specialty, in the inner city particularly.

MR. ANDERSON: Yes.

MR. WATTENBERG: Can you tell us and our audience, what are youpicking up there? What do you hear? What are the young people sayingwho are the topic of our conversation?

MR. ANDERSON: Yeah. No, I think, just to respond to David andHeidi here -- and Amitai -- I mean, the -- it's very important tounderstand the economy is important; it's very important. Thecultural issues are there as well. I'm not denying that. I talk toyoung people in the inner city. I talk to young men who don't getmarried. And I say, 'Why? Why don't you get married? You have thischild.' Young men tell me, 'I can't play house; I can't play house.'

What that means is they can't play house the way they'd like toplay house. They like to mimic the American dream oftentimes. Theyhave a conception of that -- mother, father, at home, children,picket fence, the whole bit. That's extreme perhaps a little bit, butthis is the vision. But given the jobs that these young men are ableto get or not able to get, they can't play house in that way. And theyoung boys understand that without a job, without economicopportunity, they can't expect to dominate that house. They can'ttell the woman what to do. They can't tell her how to dress. She willtalk back. She might do other things that they don't like, to theextent that they don't have economic ability to tighten up thatsituation.

MR. ETZIONI: You've given me now two reasons --

MR. ANDERSON: And sometimes the abuse that you talk about isrelated to the inability to control the household through economicmeans. A lot of the men would like to be fathers, would like to behusbands, but on their terms. Their terms oftentimes gets us intotricky water with sexism, domination, and that kind of thing. But alot of the young men see the wider culture as being involved in thesekinds of relationships and they'd like to mimic some of these.

MR. BLANKENHORN: Most of what you're talking about is culturalanalysis. And I agree with it, and you've written provocatively aboutit in your book 'Streetwise.' What I guess -- the point I wouldrespond to is that's true, and therefore let's talk about theculture. Let's talk about what it means to be a man, what it means tobe a father, what it means to be a husband. But I think that it's alittle too reductionist to simply drop it all down to this questionof jobs. Jobs are terrific; let's have more of them. But isn't thisreally -- you were talking about the culture. You were talking aboutcultural attitudes there.

MR. ANDERSON: Poverty works against the family.

MR. BLANKENHORN: Yes, that's right.

MR. ANDERSON: Poverty works against the family.

MR. WATTENBERG: We have had periods in relatively recent decadeswhere poverty was higher, unemployment was higher and out-of-wedlockbirth was substantially lower. So why are you and Heidi particularlymaking this point that there is a direct causal effect betweenunemployment and poverty and out-of-wedlock births? I mean, certainlyif you go back to the Depression, you did not have highout-of-wedlock rates of birth and you had very high unemployment.

MR. ANDERSON: Sure. Something's happening.

MR. WATTENBERG: And a great deal of poverty.

MR. ANDERSON: Something's happening. I'm kind of giving you theethnographic story. This is what I observe. These are the things thatyoung men say. I think that, if we had more opportunities forindependent incomes, you'd probably see more family formation. Thatdoesn't mean that it would be exactly the way we might want asmiddle-class people or people who are very concerned about sexism,domination, that kind of thing. But I think more of these men wouldtry to form families if indeed they had economic opportunity. Withouteconomic opportunity, people get by any way they can.

MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, but, you know, the -- I was just looking atthis. The rate of teen-agers graduating from high school, black andwhite, is at an all-time high and there is almost parity now betweenblacks and whites, which is an astonishing fact for any of those ofus who have studied data over the years. So that would seem to say --I mean, it's like in the high 80s or low 90s for both whites andblacks. That would seem to say that there is opportunity foradvancement, they are following through. And yet you have thiscultural thing that David's talking about.

MR. BLANKENHORN: And also, it's not, I mean, just the numbers.Compare the unemployment rate to the fatherlessness rate. It's just-- it's wildly out of proportion. If you ask people in a community,'What would you like to -- which number is the most -- the worstnumber in your neighborhood, the unemployment rate or thefatherlessness rate or the out-of-wedlock childbearing rate?' it'sthe cultural trend. This abandonment of men in the lives of theirchildren is dwarfing anything that's going on in the economy. MR.ETZIONI: Let me add here something because it is really dangerous toturn it into a ghetto issue.

MR. BLANKENHORN: I know.

MR. WATTENBERG: And I want to get out of --

MR. BLANKENHORN: Faster among whites than among blacks, fasteramong college-educated than non-college-educated. It's a societalissue.

MR. ETZIONI: Let's talk about the absence of fathers in the middleclass.

MR. BLANKENHORN: Right.

MR. ETZIONI: And there again, obviously, at least economically,they're somewhat more comfortable. And there the causal factors stickout even more clearly. And particularly there, there is anabandonment. There are studies done in Pennsylvania showing thatwithin a year fathers were divorced or separated, you know, justforget about the children. It's almost an incredible lack ofresponsibility --

MR. BLANKENHORN: Not much child support, not much visitationwithin a year or so after divorce. And so the fatherlessness enginein our society, I think, cuts across class and really, with someimportant exceptions, has very little to do with the track that theeconomy is on.

MR. WATTENBERG: Timeout for a minute. We're talking now aboutwhat's broken. Heidi, why don't you start? If it's broken, how do wefix it? What can we do?

MS. HARTMANN: I think one of the things we haven't done is adjustpublic policy to meet the needs of basically the two-working-parentfamily, something like a shorter work day, something like realassistance with child care and elder care for these families. Themothers have taken on a tremendous new responsibility for financialsupport of the family. And I think, although some fathers arecertainly participating more in child care and the housework theyalso have to do to maintain the family, others aren't.

And I think where we have public policy or public institutionsthat can support the families -- for example, through eating cantinesthat would be very common in your neighborhood schools. You'd pick upyour children after school, and you have dinner there before you gohome. This was something we apparently had in World War II. So thereare lots of ways to support working families through public policy,and not the least of which is financial. I think all working parentsthat are low-income, whether they're single or married, should haveaccess to financial support from the rest of us.

MR. WATTENBERG: Eli, do you have a little kit of remedies the wayHeidi does?

MR. ANDERSON: Well, if you assume -- I mean, I think the culturalchange issues are there. Certainly things are are changing in certainways. And I think there's a devaluation of the family and all ofthat. But I think that, if we assume that the transformation is goingon and that there is distress, not only among the very poor but alsothe middle classes, certainly various institutions are going to beunder stress, including particularly the family.

Now, I would say that when young people have a sense of thefuture, have a really positive sense of the future, they probablydon't get pregnant as easily as do people who don't. I think that, ifyou compare people that I study, inner-city poor young people who getpregnant the way they do, if you compare these people with white andblack college students, there's probably just as much sexual activitygoing on, but the college students don't get pregnant. The reason isthat these people have a positive sense of the future, a sense thatif they do certain things, then their future is going to bedisrupted. The inner-city poor don't have that same outlook, andthat's got to change. If you want to do something in terms of reallytrying to instill values, you've got to change that situation. Andthat's where the economy comes in. That's why so many young peopledon't want families, I think.

MR. WATTENBERG: Amitai, remedies?

MR. ETZIONI: Well, I'm all in favor of giving people hope, but weneed to help young people to communicate better with each other. It'sa teachable skill. Our studies show that couples which break up fightabout as often as couples who stay together, but the second couplesfight better. They don't attack each other personally. They attackthe issue. There are many teachable skills which we should teach.

MR. WATTENBERG: You mean that remarriage is less turbulent than afirst marriage?

MR. ETZIONI: No, no, before you get married, in high school --

MR. WATTENBERG: Oh, I see.

MR. ETZIONI: -- we should teach you how to resolve conflicts sowhen you get married, your marriage will last better. Many churchesand synagogues now insist, before they marry you, that you come forseveral meetings in which they'll see if you're together on how manychildren you're going to have, what happens if you have to move andthe other one has a job -- taking marriage more seriously.

We surely need to change our evaluation in which we cherish whenpeople dedicate themselves to their children. We need flex time. Weneed child allowance. I'm all in favor of the $500. It's just astarter. All other countries give you -- all other developedcountries give you a year of paid leave, fathers and mothers. So weneed to work on both sides of the street.

But let me say one thing, as a father of five sons, that -- as afather of five sons, that in the end it's a question of dedication.And nothing I did in my life has been more rewarding, despitewhatever feathers I have in my cap, than having spent time with mysons. And I just want to tell you the viewers that try it, you willlike it.

MR. WATTENBERG: I would endorse that without any equivocation.

David Blankenhorn, I know you are traveling around the countrywith your new book, 'Fatherless America,' and you are purveying a setof remedies or near-remedies. Could you give us a brief -- yourmantra briefly?

MR. BLANKENHORN: Well, let us improve the economy as much as wecan, yes. Let us assist working couples with child care. Butbasically the challenge before us is a culture shift, a change ofheart and priorities about whether or not children deserve theirfathers. And the basic idea is the divorce rate's way too high,out-of-wedlock childbearing is wrong, and every child deserves afather. Now, if we change our minds on those set of issues in thatdirection, we'll change some of our public policies -- welfare, tax,et cetera. We'll change some of our institutions -- day care centersin the junior highs and so on. There'll be legal changes --rethinking no-fault divorce laws.

But the basic issue -- and I think that we tend to just almostbend over backwards not to say this honestly -- the basic issue isattitudinal. It's a normative question about what it means to be aresponsible father and what it means to be married. So it's anattitudinal shift. And my effort with the National FatherhoodInitiative and going around and having these community meetings istwofold. One is, let us have a national debate on the crisis offatherlessness. Two, let us resolve to reverse the trend by changingour minds on the basic question of does every child deserve a father.In the wake of that change, many other legal and public policychanges will happen. I mention a lot of them in my book. But thecentral question -- the most important thing to change is our minds.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, thank you, Amitai Etzioni, DavidBlankenhorn, Elijah Anderson and Heidi Hartmann.

And thank you. Please send your questions and comments to NewRiver Media, 1150 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20036. Or we canbe reached via e-mail at thinktv@aol.com.

For 'Think Tank', I'm Ben Wattenberg.

ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content.

'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, a recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, unlocking thesecrets of life through cellular and molecular biology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. END

Back to top

Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc.

©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved.

Web development by Bean Creative.