The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, noted feminist scholar and child advocate, and Cornel West, Harvard philosopher and well-known human rights leader, join in a rare partnership to explore one of the most painful problem of our times. Why are hundreds of thousands of American children "dangling and dangerous" and millions more failing to thrive? At the heart of our children's agony is a frightening erosion of the parenting role - not because parents are less devoted than they used to be but because the whole world is stacked against them. Big business, government, and the wider culture are waging a silent war against parents, undermining the work they do. Adults raising children have been harmed by managerial greed, pounded by tax and housing policy, and invaded and degraded by the entertainment industry. In The War Against Parents, Hewlett and West present a blueprint for parent empowerment, which they call a G.I. Bill for the Twenty-first Century. United behind an agenda that spans the divides of race, gender, and class. The War Against Parents is both a visionary and an intimate book. Hewlett and West explore their childhoods — strangely similar stories of growing up in family-centered blue-collar communities in Wales and California — and with striking candor tell of their struggles to be a good mother and a good father in our parent-hurting society. Lending moral heft to the work parents do, Hewlett and West provide comfort and hope. There is not a parent among us who is not hungry for such healing.

A white woman and a black man come together to address the burning social issue of our time--the virtual abandonment of parents by our business, political, and cultural elites. They call for a Parents' Bill of Rights that spans the divides of race, gender, and class to give new value and dignity to the parental role and restore our nation's commitment to the well-being of children.
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Cornel West is a professor of philosophy of religion and Afro-American studies at Harvard University and the author of several books, including the best-selling Race Matters. Mr. West currenty resides in Boston, Massachusetts.Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and author of several books, including the award-winning When the Bough Breaks. Founder and President of the National Parenting Association, she lectures widely thoughout the country. She currently lives in New York City.

Acknowledgments

Prologue

I. Struggling Parents Then and Now

1. The Partnership

2. Parents and National Survival

II. Waves of Attack

3. Managerial Greed and the Collapse of Economic Security

4. Government Tilts Against Parents

5. A Poisonous Popular Culture

III. Fathers Under Siege

6. The Disabling of Dads

7. Escape Routes: Promise Keepers and the

Nation of Islam

IV. Reweaving the Web of Care

8. What Do Parents Want?

9. A Parents' Bill of Rights

Appendix A: Detailed Analysis of Survey Work

Appendix B: Tables

Notes

Index