If we judge the West by the state of its families, the West is sick. Millions of children barely see their parents, or for only a few minutes a day.

One in two families break down, for better or worse. The casualties throng the family courts. Our maladjusted system has made the ideal of 'mom' and 'dad' - i.e. a loving, constant, adult presence in a child's infancy - a rarity. To speak of the 'maternal instinct' still elicits scorn or embarrassment from some feminists, who continue to mock 'holy motherhood'.

This Single is a defense of parents and children. It does not suggest a return to the 1950s. On the contrary, it champions the 'New Family', which most policymakers, companies, religions and social conservatives have failed to accept or keep pace with (read on to find out what the New Family is).

The resulting policy drag - the failure to transform notions of childcare, the workplace and parental leave to match new social realities - has had devastating consequences for the family, especially that exhausted, unsung heroine, the working mother.

Drawing on the latest research, Paul Ham and Bernie Brown hope to bring fresh thinking to one of the oldest and most difficult challenges: how best to raise children. We offer twelve 'Modest Proposals' that might better attune the West to the needs of the New Family...


Quotes from Honey, We Forgot the Kids


'... new role models have failed to fill the void where "dad" and "mom" existed.'

'The Western family has been squeezed into a little box of time marked "care for kids" and flung into a corner of our day.'

'The twin pressures of work and childcare costs are flogging American parents.'

'... working mothers find themselves buffeted about in a society with a split personality: on the one hand, it exhorts them to develop their careers and smash through the glass ceiling; on the other, it pretends they can also raise a family. The mother stands in the vortex of this ruptured world, and the tension bears down on her with terrific force.'

'... our every waking hour is managed around computer algorithms that do not recognize the existence of families... '

'... governments who coerce or bribe women to have children might be expected to feel a concomitant obligation to help women raise children.'

'... social conservatives have fought hard to keep the traditional family intact, despite the fact that the traditional family cannot survive in the ferociously competitive economic environment they otherwise espouse.'

'Children played with spent cartridges and unexploded bombs during the Vietnam War. They play in mountains of garbage in India. They play at the feet of junior drug lords in Midwest crystal-meth dens. They play amid the blood and screams of their parents' violence. They run around in brothels, jungle trails, and refugee camps. They smile out of bomb shelters and in the shadow of religious fanatics. They play despite having been brainwashed, recruited into child armies, sexually abused, and genitally mutilated. Then they grow up and learn the awful truth... '

'What matters is that a child is loved and cared for, regardless of the source of the love... '

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