Customer Reviews

The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family

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Now in paperback with a new preface by the author, The Assault On Parenthood is a stinging, thought-provoking wake-up call with regard to the erosion of parental authority and family intimacy in today's modern culture. Based on interviews with parents from all tiers of society, The Assault On Parenthood rages against the tyranny of "experts" in psychology, education, law, and social science that undermine parental authority. The Assault On Parenthood is a "must" for anyone who is concerned about where American families are headed in contemporary times and in the future.

Years from now this book will be remembered as the turning point in the fight to establish the right of American parents to raise their children without the unnecessary interference of the state. Ms. Mack is not the first to have written on the various subjects in her book, but she has synthesized the information more effectively, and meticulously documented her facts with many pages of footnotes. The subject is complex, and as a result the book is not a fast read, but it may change your outlook on the way our government wants you to raise your children

I was actually frightened (for my child) and disgusted by the time I finished this book. This book made it very clear to me how our children are being mis-educated and how parents are being undermined in our country today. The idea that educators and lawmakers are testing their theories on our children was infuriating. Ms. Mack has done a commendable job on pulling it all together, even if I don't agree with her that the government can provide solutions to these problems.

One problem with this book is the author's antagonism to those who attempt to prevent parental abuse. The effort to understand abuse is not an "assault" on the family. Quite the opposite.

Dana Mack has written an excellent critique of how American culture and political institutions have undermined parental authority and attachment to their children. She spares neither the left nor the right in her hard-hitting arguments about how anti-family our modern society has become. Liberals will hate her take on employed moms, daycare, government-run schools, Hollywood, religion, marriage, divorce, tax reform, and so on. Conservatives will hate her treatment of welfare reform, paid maternity leave, and increasing social services to poor families.

Reading this a decade after it was written, I was depressed by how much worse the problem has become in the interim. Out-of-wedlock births are now nearly 40% of the total in our country. Music, TV, movies, etc. are more explicit than ever. The hostility to traditional religion has markedly increased in recent years (witness the publicity granted by the elite media to militant atheist demagogues such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens). The optimistic tone of Ms. Mack's book touting a "new familism" has turned out not to be justified :-(

Mack's book takes a curiously myopic perspective on family and cultural issues. Over and over, we hear the refrain that American culture is unfriendly to children(!), and that parents are helpless to do anything about it in the face of Big Bad government, coporate advertising, popular culture, TV, secularism, etc., etc. This thesis, in the midst of the most youth-oriented and child-obsessed society this planet has ever SEEN, strikes me as fatuous at best.

Mack is very free with the blame in several arguably valid directions, however. Many child welfare and social-services policies _are_ bizarre, impractical, or excessively paranoid, and innocent people's rights _are_ occasionally violated. The same holds true for public education and some workplace policies. However, she approaches these topics from a monolithic perspective that there is still One Right Way to do things, and we need to return to the comfortable 50s culture, where Mom stayed at home, Dad worked to bring home the bacon, and everybody who counted was a white, God-fearing Christian. When divorce happened, the mother always got custody. Hey, so it was unfair to fathers--so what? At least it made the process short and simple for the sake of the kids. The fact that our society is broader and deeper than that now goes unrecognized--except perhaps unconsciously, as fear.

Likewise, Mack bemoans the value relativism and "socializing" emphasis of public schools--and she definitely has a point that the focus on basic skills and knowledge has been fading, and needs to be restored. But what does she propose, other than home- and private schooling for the kids whose parents can afford it (in both time and money)? Again, the fact that society has changed seems to be lost on the author.

Our society faces a lot of problems, many of which are working against the best interests of American children. But this approach--blaming everything and everyone but the parents themselves, and seeking a return to good ol' Whitebread America--is not the answer. Nowhere in this volume dedicated to restoring treasured ideals and principles will you find the one that matters most to kids: "parental responsibility."