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there be too much liberty? Our reverence for the crack in that
bell seems to say, no. For liberty's sake, Americans shun comfort,
brave solitude, put fortune and life at risk. Liberty appears to
trump all. Yet liberty unbounded is an illusion; liberty alone
is a lie.
Without having put it into words, the Founders understood this.
They took for granted the respect for authority and the ethic of
mutual obligation that governed America's families. They assumed
that children would be responsibly ruled by their parents until
they were capable of wielding liberty wisely themselves. It was
understood that independence was for nations, and that freedom belonged
to the world of commerce and politics. Life within that crucible
of liberty — the family — was not about freedom. Responsibility,
discipline — and an intimate fellowship that softened and justified
all the sacrifice — was the order of the day.
Liberty is for adults. But human beings are born helpless. Only
the child who is gently but wisely governed attains to mature self-government.
The child who can depend unconditionally upon his parents will give
unconditionally — will want to give unconditionally —
to those who will someday depend upon him. Liberty in commerce
and politics is sustained by the family, but the family is sustained
by something very different than pure liberty.
All of this may seem elementary, but none of it is obvious —
especially not now. The cultural changes that have overtaken America
in the past thirty years or so have put into question everything
that the founders took for granted about the limits of liberty.
The post-sixties ethos of personal liberation is precisely an attempt
to put a final end to authority and sacrifice by carrying the Declaration's
principles of freedom and equality into the sphere of the family.
But the great obstacle to the liberationist project is the ineradicable
helplessness of human beings at the beginning and end of their lives--a
helplessness that demands familial authority and sacrifice, whether
we wish it or not.
American's are justifiably proud of their legacy. At great cost,
and after great peril, democracy and the market appear to have triumphed.
Much of the world now speaks our language, listens to our music,
wears our clothes, watches our television, or yearns to do these
things. We can barely bar our doors. During the campaign's foreign
policy debate, President Bush spoke of humility, but it's difficult
to be humble under such circumstances. There is something important
that we still need to learn from the rest of the world, however--something
we've forgotten.
When Americans look out at the world beyond Europe, they tend to
see an ocean of humanity ripe for liberation — peoples entangled
in various degrees of ignorance, prejudice, and authoritarianism
— yet also peoples who seem to be yearning, sometimes without
half knowing it, for liberty and equality.
There is truth in this way of seeing the world. Yet if it is possible
for whole societies to turn against the realities of human liberty
and equality, is it not possible for a society to turn against the
reality of human dependence? For all their sacrifice of liberty
and equality, traditional societies pay homage to the truth of human
dependence. Adults in these societies are seldom alone — and
seldom wish to be alone. Children are nurtured by many. The ill
and aged remain in their family's care and company until death.
For all the sacrifice of freedom and equality that such webs of
mutual obligation entail, something important is gained.
America has untangled that web of mutual dependence. It is difficult
to think of a social reform or a technological innovation in the
modern world that does not somehow contribute to the individual's
ability to maintain himself independently of others. In a sense,
modernity is precisely the ripping away of that fabric of mutual
entanglement that defines traditional societies. People who live
alone need answering machines…and answering machines make it
easier to live alone. Our telephones, televisions, recorded music,
and computers are important to us because we are so often alone.
With these aides, we seem not to be alone. And simply having them
encourages us to be more alone still.
We can pretend that these technological companions are enough.
And in a sense they are. Technology, after all, cuts two ways.
Answering machines make it easier to live alone, but also allow
people living independent lives to meet with lovers and friends.
Yet for children and the elderly infirm, none of this will do.
Machines make those who are already independent more so. But the
dependent require more. For children and the elderly infirm, someone
simply has to be there — to feed, to dress, to provision, to
teach, to govern, and to love.
Thirty-some years may seem like enough time to assess our new cultural
mode, but it's not. The easy part is over now, but the crunch is
coming — the revenge of the repressed, so to speak, as the
truth of a dependence long denied emerges. A changing America
has followed the baby boomers from their college years through maturity.
And the boomers are now at the apex of their cultural power. But
we have yet to reckon with the maturity of the boomers' children,
and the old age of the boomers themselves. Above all, we have yet
to reckon with the combination of the two.
The rising crisis of America's dependents — children and the
elderly — was the real story of the new census statistics released
a couple of months ago, although this was buried underneath the
rush to tout the disappearance of the traditional family —
supposedly reflected in the fact that less than 25% of American
households now consist of a married couple with children. As E.
J. Dionne Jr. recently pointed out, even in 1960, the height of
the Ozzie and Harriet era, only 45% of American households were
composed of a married couple with children. Many of the remaining
families consisted of aging parents who's children had left. And
while families with children are about twenty percent less likely
to be led by a married couple now than in 1960, what the low percentage
of families with two parents and children really reflects is the
fact that people are now living longer.
Every senior living alone counts as a "family," and the real problem
reflected in the census statistics is that a vast generation of
elderly and long-lived boomers is about to experience years of dependence
upon a generation of children imbued by the boomers themselves with
the ethos of self-fulfillment. In caring for their parents, these
children will be forced to negotiate the complex lines of resentment
and responsibility left by divorce, blended families, and single
parenthood.
It's a frightening thought, and as a society we haven't begun to
face it. For us, the related truths of dependence in children and
the aging are still taboo. An article like Mary Eberstadt's recent
"Home
Alone America," which details the extent and consequences of
the parental desertion of the home, still has the power to shock
— not simply for what it says, but for the fact that someone
dares to say it. In her important new book, Love
and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work
Jennifer
Roback Morse puts her finger on the problem, but so far the
book hasn't garnered the attention it deserves.
Yet someone, at least, is trying to force the notice of society
onto the consequences for children of the new cultural mode. Where,
however, is the discussion of aging? Yes, the coming crisis of
Social Security and the roots of that crisis in the demographics
of the baby boom is now a subject of public debate, as are proposals
for prescription-drug benefits. But Social Security and prescription
drugs only scratch the surface of the social dilemma we are about
to face.
Medical science has added years to our lives, but in the process
has also subjected us to unprecedented periods of frailty and dependence.
The explosion of Alzheimer's Disease is only the most dramatic example
of the problem. A stabilized Social Security system and prescription
drug benefits can't do much by themselves for an Alzheimer's patient.
It takes a spouse and/or a grown child (preferably more than one)
to manage the thousand-and-one things that must be done for an elderly
person with advanced Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. Even taking
advantage of, say, Medicare's offer of reimbursement for a wheelchair,
can be a task well beyond the reach of many elderly. A high quality
assisted-living facility may do the paper work, but who arranges
to place an elderly person in such a facility in the first place,
or to pull him out if the care is inferior?
The care in even the very best assisted-living facilities and nursing
homes can be woefully wanting at times for a truly helpless elderly
person. Private care is beyond the means of most, and private care
has in any case to be managed and paid for by someone with the best
interests of the person in question at heart. There is simply no
substitute for family in such matters. But when the time comes,
will the children of the boomers come through? Many boomers have
no children. Many had children late. Many are divorced more than
once. Will nephews and nieces, relatively immature children, and
the children of blended families and complex custody arrangements
be there when it counts? Or will latch-key children make for latch-key
parents?
Then there's that other product of the sixties ethos — the
nursing shortage, which is already seriously degrading hospital
and elder care throughout the country, and promises to be at crisis
proportions in the near future. Not only did feminism precipitate
the nursing shortage by opening up a vast array of career choices
to women, feminism created a positive distaste for nursing, which,
for the independent woman, too much resembled the service and sacrifice
of mothering. And we've put a patch on the nursing shortage in
the same way we've patched up the mothering shortage — by importing
nurses and nannies from places like the Philippines. The world
thirsts for our music and technology, but what we now need from
the world tells its own sad story. We have turned away from —
even feel a subtle contempt for — the reality of human dependence.
In America, true independence has always been grounded in an unspoken
acknowledgment of the reality of human dependence — and therefore
in the authoritative guidance and loving sacrifice that children
receive from adults within stable families. Through some wondrous
but fragile alchemy, a child well loved by a parent will want, and
even need, to return that loving care. We have been tampering for
well over thirty years with this time-tested formula, and there's
good reason to fear the result. So maybe what's needed is to say
out loud at last what the founders had no need to say. Perhaps
what's wanted today is an acknowledgment — a ringing declaration
— of the reality of human dependence.
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