Home Alone America [Hardcover]

Eberstadt actually focuses on parents (that's plural) both Moms and Dads, deadbeat Dads, as well as divorced parents who use toys and junkfood for short-term rewards or to compensate for the face to face time that they can't have with their children.

She talks about busy parents who use junk food, videos, video games, locked houses, and perscription drugs as substitutes for their attention.

She talks about the dangers that she sees with the early socialization of children before they're really ready. (i.e., putting kids in Daycare before the age of 3).

She talks about the dangers of kids who come home from school and are alone until parents return from work.

She also devotes considerable time to the rise in childhood obesity and how the above factors contribute to that.

This is certainly not a mere "Blame the mom" screed as some might call it. THere is a nuanced and deep look at parenting in these busy times.

There is a lot of noise in our society about our troubled young. And that is well because it is true. There are also an almost infinite number of suggestions on how to "manage" these problems: counseling, more counseling, medication, raising daycare standards, yet more counseling and more medication, and on and on it goes.

This powerful book asks a somewhat different question. What if the problem isn't the kids? What if their reactions are reasonable responses to a toxic environment of outsourced childrearing (to daycare and medication), of absent fathers, of transient relationships in their relationship role models, and in consistently bad advice given them on sex, careers, and marriage?

She points out the current themes in popular music are abandonment, hurt from missing parents, rage against parental neglect, and the need for oblivion to escape the pain of loneliness. It isn't rebelling against mom and pop anymore. It is more like where are mom and dad and why don't they care about me. This is sad and painful on all fronts.

Mary Eberstadt is clear and honest in her facts and analysis. She admits there is neither simple panacea nor even a complex solution. She advocates beginning with a new consensus that it would be better for both children and adults if more American parents were with their kids more of the time. I know that sounds simplistic, but it is not simple. Given the financial burdens most families have taken on, it is very hard to make something like this happen. However, if we decide we believe we need our kids and they need us and that time together is important, we can make adjustments in our lives to make that happen.

I hope this book is widely read and widely discussed in thoughtful ways rather than just the normal political yelling at the other side. The topic affects us all. We all have an important stake in this and we all shoulder some of the blame. So, let's get at it.

Many of Eberstadt's points are very astute and worth considering, and for that, I give her three stars. For instance, the amount of medication our children are taking to make them "normal." The rise of aggression in our youngest children. The rise in childhood obsesity, because we no longer live in a world where children play, outside of highly structured, controlled events.

I don't disagree with anything descriptive she says about these issues. (And in fact, her chapter on GenX and Hip Hop music is quite well done.) But she blames this on a current culture where women (and men) leave their children in daycare, too focused on their own careers to care about them.

And given her personal experience, there is much that probably bears this out. She lives in Washington DC, in a very nice, very expensive neighborhood. The mood around her is definitely a liberal, career driven one.

However, I live in a red town, in a red county, in a red state. I live in a neighborhood of stay at home mothers, and fathers who are able to attend games and volunteer for boy scouting events. And what do I see? Children who are aggressive. Children who are obese. Children who are on medication. Most children do not play outside on our cul-de-sac because it "isn't safe." (I honestly have no idea what that means -- it is far safer from anywhere else I've ever lived.)

So even the right knows there is a problem with parenting. They blame the left, perhaps because they live in a left-wing world themselves. But for those of us who are NOT living in left-wing cultural milieus, those explanations fall flat.

But the parenting problem remains in the US today. One of the few things the left and the right agree on.