Family Matters

I really wish my father were here. Then I wouldn't have to depend upon my friends (that's you, M.B.) and anonymous readers (that's you, Sean) to pat me on the head and tell me how naive I am. "Taxes are bad because they take money from the people who have earned it and make it impossible for them to start new businesses, hire workers, and generally benefit the economy all around." My father loved this argument when he was talking about trying to get his auto shop to make some (any) money, but for the last fifteen years of his life, he worked for the surgery department in a public university and spent the greater part of his time at the V.A. hospital, being paid by, um, the government. He was also, in his younger days, adamantly opposed to any government-supported health care system; by the time he died, he had revised his thinking on this somewhat. The bureaucracy, waste and corruption of the insurance system had convinced him that the poor--whom he spent the greater part of his time caring for, particularly in the emergency room--would never get proper health care without a publicly-funded structure. Yes, Sean, emergency rooms care for those without insurance, but it is only because doctors like my father treat them for free. Should he not have been compensated by someone for all the hard work that he did taking care of them? Oh, yes, he was: the taxpayers who paid his salary at the V.A. He certainly never made any money out of his private practice; he was too busy caring for the veterans and the poor.

It all depends on what metaphors we use or, as George Lakoff would put it*, our frames. It is not that conservatives care for their country while liberals do not, or vice versa. It is that both are working within a particular frame that carries with it certain entailments. Conservatives and liberals have such a hard time talking to each other because they are inhabiting different frames. So, when a liberal (like Obama) says we need to "spread the wealth around", liberals (a.k.a. progressives) hear him saying that we need to take responsibility for our community and help each other reach our fullest potential together, while conservatives hear him saying that we should reward the weak for their lack of discipline. Liberals think of taxes in terms of making an investment: in our future, in our children's future. After all (in liberal thinking), all of us, rich and poor, benefit from (to give Lakoff's list) "the interstate highway system, the Internet, the scientific and medical establishments, our communications system, our airline system, the space program." Conservatives, on the other hand, think of taxes in terms of a burden from which it is best to be relieved. Liberals hear this as an excuse for not participating in the upkeep of the community. And so forth.

How is it that we are not able to hear each other? As Lakoff would say, blame it on the metaphors.

On the one hand, we are all working with an overarching metaphor of the nation as a family. We have "Founding Fathers." My great-aunt was a life-long member of the "Daughters of the American Revolution."** We "send our sons" to war.

On the other hand, we are working with entirely different ideals of what makes a good family.

The conservatives' model is that of the strict father family: "The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world. The world is also difficult because it is competitive. There will always be winners and losers. There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good. What is needed in this kind of a world is a strong, strict father who can 1) Protect the family in a dangerous world. 2) Support the family in the difficult world, and 3) Teach his children right from wrong."

This model (like all metaphors) carries with it various entailments. It is not the role of the father to coddle his children, otherwise they will become weak and not be able to care for themselves when they grow up. Rather, he is to instill in them a sense of discipline and obedience so that they will learn to work hard and support themselves. "In this model...a good person--a moral person--is someone who is disciplined enough to be obedient, to learn what is right, do what is right and not do what is wrong, and to pursue her self-interest to prosper and become self-reliant. A good child grows up to be like that. A bad child is one who does not learn discipline, does not function morally, does not do what is right, and therefore is not disciplined enough to become prosperous. She cannot take care of herself and thus becomes dependent. When the good children mature, they either have learned discipline and can prosper, or have failed to learn it. From this point on the strict father is not to meddle in their lives. This translates politically into no government meddling."

Translated into policy on social programs this means that it is immoral to help people by giving them things (health care, education) that they have not earned "because they will not develop discipline and will become both dependent and immoral." In terms of taxes, it means it is moral to cut taxes and reward those "whose prosperity reveals their discipline and hence their capacity for morality." Mapped onto foreign policy, this means that, as the strict father in the family of nations, it would be immoral of us to allow other countries to "tell us what to do." Children do not talk back to their father; they obey him. We, "being the best and most powerful country in the world--a moral authority--know the right thing to do. We should not be asking anybody else."

Contrast this with the liberals' model of the family: "Both parents are equally responsible for raising the children. The assumption is that children are born good and can be made better. The world can be made a better place, and our job is to work on that. The parents' job is to nurture their children and to raise their children to be nurturers of others. What does nurturance mean? It means two things: empathy and responsibility. If you have a child, you have to know what every cry means. You have to know when the child is hungry, when he needs a diaper change, when he is having nightmares. And you have a responsibility--you have to take care of this child. Since you cannot take care of someone else if you are not taking care of yourself, you have to take care of yourself enough to be able to take care of the child. All this is not easy. Anyone who has ever raised a child know that this is hard. You have to be strong. You have to work hard at it. You have to be very competent. You have to know a lot."

This "nurturant parent" model, like the "strict father" model, has certain entailments. Parents want to protect their children from things like crime, drugs, poisonous additives in food, dangerous working conditions, devastation of the environment, and, yes, terrorist attacks. Because taking care of children is such hard work, it is morally-imperative to take care of oneself, too. One wants one's children to be happy and fulfilled; it is therefore imperative that they have the freedom to do so. Freedom is constrained if there is no opportunity and prosperity, so these are values for the nurturant parent as well. Opportunity and prosperity are dependent upon a vibrant community life, therefore "community-building, service to the community, and cooperation in a community become values. To have cooperation, you must have trust, and to have trust you must have honesty and open two-way communication. Trust, honesty and open community are fundamental progressive values--in a community as in a family."

Doubtless, to a conservative, this all sounds like so much wishy-washy naivete. I can just hear the responses (this is me now, not Lakoff): "Don't you know that it's a dangerous world out there, with people who hate us and want to take our lifestyle away from us? We have to fight to defend ourselves against them. And do you really think coddling children in this way is any way to teach them to work hard, do their homework, and be able to earn a living when they grow up? People get what they deserve and if you want our country to be weak, then you deserve to be conquered by [fill in the blank of current enemy]. You just want to give away everything that we've worked so hard to build." And so forth. The clash of metaphor continues.

Oh, and by the by, I don't do my son's homework for him. I think he should learn to do it himself. But both my husband and I will help him if he asks for help, e.g. in proofreading or checking his answers.

*All quotations from Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (2004).
**Which means I am eligible, too. My father was very proud of this fact, although it was my mother's aunt (a librarian) who was most active with the DAR.