Father Load
Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, Linda Hirshman panned many of the stories in our current “Mother Load” special report. Below, some of the authors respond to her criticism, particularly about the role of fathers. March 14: Linda Hirshman March 15: Kathleen Gerson March 16: Courtney E. Martin March 16: Brad Reid March 19: Linda Hirshman Kathleen…
What a Load
In the discussion about achieving work/life balance, men are getting a free pass.
Fighting Apart for Time Together
Editor’s Note: This piece is part of “Mother Load,” a TAP special report on work/family issues. I had one of those fathers who was always standing on the sidelines of my lacrosse games, cheering his heart out in a slightly wrinkled suit. When my teammates’ mothers would comment on how extraordinary it was that my…
What Do Women and Men Want?
Young workers today grew up in rapidly changing times: They watched women march into the workplace and adults develop a wide range of alternatives to traditional marriage. Now making their own passage to adulthood, these “children of the gender revolution” have inherited a far different world from that of their parents or grandparents. They may…
The Architecture of Work and Family
We hear a lot of talk in the united states today about “family values” and “personal responsibility.” And yet being a good family member here can cost you your job or a career opportunity, or imperil your health and security. Conversely, being a conscientious employee can jeopardize a loved one, destroy a relationship (or prevent…
Values Begin at Home, but Who’s Home?
Family is the center of everyday American life. Our parents are our first protectors, first teachers, first role models, and first friends. Parents know that America’s great reward is the quiet but incomparable satisfaction that comes from building their families a better life. Strong families, blessed with opportunity, guided by faith, and filled with dreams…
Settlement Creep
At first glance, it seemed like good news: In January, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz froze plans for a new settlement in the West Bank, partly in response to U.S. objections. Just a few weeks before, Peretz had given the go-ahead for the establishment of Maskiot, the first new settlement to win Israeli government approval…
The Opt-Out Revolution Revisited
“I was tired of juggling. I was tired of feeling guilty. I was tired of holding the household reins in one hand. So I quit.” On the cover of The New York Times Magazine for October 26, 2003, a classy looking white woman with long, straight hair sits serenely with her baby, ignoring the ladder…
Responsive Workplaces
More and more, working parents have dual — and dueling — responsibilities on the job and at home. Yet today’s workplace often seems stuck in a time warp, modeled for Ward and June Cleaver when the reality feels more like television’s Survivor. Some employers have adapted and made their workplaces responsive to working parents. Flexible…
Setting a Low Bar
Every year, Working Mother magazine announces its much-anticipated “100 Best Companies.” Employers leap to publicize their inclusion on the list, and it’s routinely a best-selling issue. But is the “100 Best” — and similar lists published by other magazines and organizations — much more than public relations? Large companies are already required by the Family…
Atlantic Passages
Many rich countries do a far better job than the United States does of supporting workers who are balancing the competing demands of employment and parenthood. Several European countries, especially in northern and western Europe, provide extensive work/family reconciliation policies — including paid family leave, public early-childhood education and care, and working-time measures that raise…
The Mother of All Issues
Generation X has grown up. Its members and their personalities consumed our nation’s attention in the 1980s, when it seemed this generation would go down in history as a group of spoiled slackers. Then in the late 1990s, the generation written off as a bunch of yahoos became the generation behind Yahoo. Now age 26…
What About Fathers?
The Bush administration and its allies like to tell us that Americans have forgotten about marriage, and that Americans have stopped caring about fathers. As good as it is to bring attention to the needs of fathers, on both points they are simply wrong: Americans believe very strongly in marriage, and rather than devaluing fathers,…
How America Does Art
Visual Shock: A History of Controversies in American Culture by Michael Kammen (Alfred A. Knopf, 450 pages, $35.00) Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding by Tyler Cowen (Princeton University Press, 196 pages, $27.95) Like almost everything else about democracy, there is little agreement about what it means…
Must Trade Kill Equality?
An Economic Strategy to Advance Opportunity, Prosperity, and Growth by Robert C. Altman, Jason E. Bordoff, Peter R. Orszag, and Robert E. Rubin (The Hamilton Project, 28 pages, free at Hamiltonproject.org) How We Compete: What Companies Around the World are Doing to Make It in Today’s Global Economy by Suzanne Berger (Currency/Doubleday, 334 pages, $27.50)…
Dirty Harry Goes P.C.
Among film critics, there seems to be a longing for a filmmaker who can assume the mantle of American master. And for many of them, Clint Eastwood is just the man. Choosing Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima as the best movie of 2006, The New York Times’ A.O. Scott wrote that with the death of…
Canoeing Life’s River
I grew up in an urban world of concrete and asphalt. Nature was a few weeds sprouting from sidewalk cracks in August. Summer camp was for rich kids. So I spent a lot of time dreaming of living in the wilderness, fueled by images from James Fennimore Cooper — the buckskin-clad deerslayer paddling down rivers,…
Six and Two
When I was in college, during Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” I had a classmate who is the person I always think of when I try to imagine the young George W. Bush. (Although the comparison is terribly unfair to this person, since unlike Bush, he has considerable accomplishment to show for his first 45…
Congressional Battleground
Can the public make its will felt through Congress and start the difficult process of bringing closure to the Iraq War? Although the voters spoke last November, the administration has seen no need to listen. But the prospect of another defeat in 2008 may motivate enough Republicans in Congress to break with the administration on…
March 2007 (PDF)
To download the March 2007 issue in PDF format, click here.
How Congress Got Us Out of Vietnam
Since January 10, when President Bush proposed a “troop surge” in Iraq, the administration has responded to legislative critics by stating that Congress cannot handle the responsibility of conducting an effective war. “You can’t run a war by committee,” Vice President Richard Cheney told FOX News on January 14. But Democrats are no longer willing…
Sight Unseen
The artist was spread-eagled against the wall. Dinh Q. Le had been putting up an enormous piece of artwork in the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum when he realized that he was missing his level, one of only two available for the installation of Saigon Open City (SOC), Vietnam’s first international art show…
America’s China Fantasy
America has been operating with the wrong paradigm for China. Day after day, U.S. officials carry out policies based upon premises about China’s future that are at best questionable and at worst downright false. The mistake lies in the very assumption that political change — and with it, eventually, democracy — is coming to China,…
