Candidates are talking up family values, but advocates complain that style exceeds substance.
When Jerry Brown kicked off his dark-horse presidential campaign last October, the former California governor focused his announcement speech around the theme of “our children’s rightful heritage.” “If we, right now, are prepared in the spirit of our ancestors to join in common cause … then we can reclaim for ourselves and our children the idea and promise of America,” he asserted boldly. Of course, Brown was speaking of “our children” in a societal sense. A lifelong bachelor, he has no children of his own. Yet in election-year politicking, candidates across the nation are laying claim to the importance of appealing to the one constituency that does not lobby and will not vote this year: children.
Politicians have rediscovered children as an issue in recent years (CT, Mar. 17, 1989, p. 34). Indeed, today, observes Stephen Robinson in the Spectator, “No American political campaign would be complete without each candidate appealing to ‘family values.’ ” However, many child-advocacy and profamily groups say they are less than pleased with the level of debate that has occurred so far during this campaign. Groups from across the political and religious spectrum complain that there has been too much political verbiage and not enough substantive discussion or policy development. And many fear there is a grave potential for children to be crassly used as political pawns.
Kids ‘R’ Votes
In many ways, President Bush got the ball rolling on children’s issues in January with his proposal to increase federal funds for the Head Start program by $600 million. Announcing the plan during a visit to a Maryland Head Start center, Bush was making good on a 1988 campaign promise to expand the government’s preschool program to serve poor children better. The President has also announced the formation of a new commission to study “the causes of the family’s decline.” In addition, he has been repeatedly talking about family values in campaign speeches, particularly in those made before conservative audiences. Bush’s Republican challenger, Pat Buchanan, has also been injecting a call for a return to “traditional family values” in virtually every campaign speech.
In the Democratic race, Gov. Bill Clinton, a member last year of the National Commission on Children, has incorporated several proposals aimed at children in his campaign platform, which he calls “The New Covenant.” Says Clinton, “If the New Covenant is prowork, it must also be profamily.” Clinton calls for “the toughest possible” child-support enforcement, community “boot camps” for first-time nonviolent juvenile offenders, and the cornerstone of his plan, substantial tax relief for families with children.
Former senator Paul Tsongas speaks at length in his platform, “A Call to Economic Arms,” about the importance of restructuring the educational system to make public schools the “meeting houses of our society,” where parents, business leaders, and clergy are in the classrooms “affirming by their very presence the criticality of education.” Tsongas says that public education must be “the top priority in America.”
Yet for all the references to children, profamily groups decry the lack of meaningful discussion. “The parties now are both struggling internally with their messages, and that seems to have delayed the substantive introduction of children and family issues,” says Charles Donovan, staff director of the Family Research Council (FRC).
Keith Butler, the pastor-politician who chairs the Coalition for the Restoration of the Black Family and Society, agrees. “Across the board, there is a whole host of issues [not being discussed],” he says, “particularly when you look at the minority community and the question of the link between poverty and family breakup.”
However, Cheryl Hayes, executive director of the National Commission on Children, says she is pleased that many of the economic discussions, which have dominated the debate, are indirectly related to the family. “It is all a reflection of concern about the health and well-being of our children and families and our future as a society,” she says.
Still, Richard Land, executive director of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission (CLC), is calling on the candidates to stop being “consumed with the economic problems” and begin addressing more cultural and moral issues relating to the family. During an address before the CLC’s annual meeting last month, former Bush cabinet member William Bennett echoed that call. “When we get it wrong,” Bennett said, “the people who pay the price are always the children.”
A Calculated Risk
In many ways, Christians appear to be leading the way in trying to shape future discussions. Bread for the World, the Christian antihunger lobby, is asking churches to shower political leaders with an “offering of letters” urging policies aimed at reducing childhood hunger and poverty. The FRC has distributed a list of seven issues for candidate discussion: prochild tax relief, welfare reform, home-based employment, parental rights, educational choice, family property rights, and the promotion of abstinence. The Children’s Defense Fund is sponsoring a series of “children’s sabbaths,” encouraging churches to devote an entire worship service to prayer for and discussion of children’s issues. And World Vision president Robert Seiple is calling for the establishment of a presidential cabinet position for children.
At the same time, notes of caution are being sounded. Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson is concerned that increased attention to children’s issues could lead to “a rising tide of political child abuse,” and the “manipulation of ‘pro-family’ and ‘pro-children’ themes to promote political handouts.”
Advocacy groups acknowledge there is always a danger that politicians will exploit children’s issues during a campaign, but many say they are willing to take that risk. Says Hayes of the National Commission on Children, “It is incumbent upon our public leaders to provide leadership and set the right tone, to serve as models, and use their stature and voice to say this is the right thing to do.” And as Seiple points out, “It doesn’t hurt at all to have the leadership of this country, those who are running for the highest public office, caring about children.”
By Kim A. Lawton.
Family Matters
Jerry Brown
Childcare: As governor, added $12 million per year to childcare programs.
Family leave: Gave state employees one year of leave for pregnancy, childbirth, and recovery.
Financial need: Sought improved enforcement of child-support orders; supports new programs aimed at the “plight of urban children.”
Bill Clinton
Childcare: Supports creation of a “childcare network as complete as the public school network”; supports giving parents vouchers to use at public institutions, but says he is opposed to vouchers for private care.
Family leave: Supports passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Tax policy: Supports changing the tax exemption for children to a credit, expansion of earned income credit, and a middle-class tax cut.
Financial need: Supports welfare reform; supports tougher child-support enforcement laws.
Teen pregnancy: Supports distribution of condoms in schools.
Paul Tsongas
Childcare: Supports “flex-time arrangements, tax credits for childcare, low-cost day care.”
Family leave: Supports legislation guaranteeing the jobs of parents taking leave after the birth of a child, during the illness of a child, or for other family emergencies.
Tax policy: Opposes middle-class tax cuts; opposes raising tax exemptions for children.
Financial need: Supports reform of child-support enforcement.
Pat Buchanan
Tax policy: Opposes the social-security tax; supports major middle-class tax cuts, and in the past has called for the abolition of all federal income taxes.
Financial need: Proposes elimination of the “welfare state.”
Teen pregnancy: Favors promotion of abstinence; opposes distribution of condoms in public schools.
George Bush
Childcare: Signed into law the 1990 Act for Better Childcare, which relied mostly on tax credits; supports the use of vouchers at religiously based childcare facilities.
Family leave: Vetoed the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1991.
Tax policy: In January, proposed middle-class tax breaks, including a $500 increase in the personal exemption, which was later “deprioritized.”
Financial need: Proposed a 27 percent increase in funding for Head Start, and a total of $4.4 billion in increases for childhood health programs.
Sources: The National Women’s Political Caucus; candidates’ campaign offices.
