Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Anne Alstott (Yale) has published No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents (Oxford University Press, 2004):

The book has an idea and a policy proposal. The idea is that parenthood is unique — different from other life choices — because parents bear an obligation not to exit their chosen way of life. For children’s sake (and society’s sake, too), parents must persist with their children for the long term, since only parents can provide the “continuity of care” that is critical to children’s development. Thus, parents should not exit their children’s lives, and society should expect them not to. But because this “no exit” characteristic of parenthood is economically costly for parents, and especially for mothers, society owes special consideration to parents’ economic plight.

The policy proposals include a $5,000 annual grant to every parent and new proposals for assistance to the parents of special needs children. The book also engages the debate over the effects of family-friendly workplace policies, which, I argue, are less fair and less effective than policies not linked to the paid workplace.

For a Boston Review symposium on the book, with articles by Robin West, Amy Wax, Dorothy Roberts, Richard Epstein, Deborah Stone, and Eva Kittay, as well as an article and response by Professor Alstott, see here.