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Admittedly, Burkett's argument has some serious flaws. She tears into the multiple tax breaks given to parents, but never manages to break down the costs incurred by raising children, presumably the expenses that these tax breaks are intended to offset. And her sympathy for those who would create adults-only neighborhoods and restaurant dining rooms smacks of intolerance: Pro-family programs may indeed be what she refers to distastefully as "affirmative action for women," but child-free spaces constitute active discrimination.

The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless By Elinor Burkett Free Press, 217 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com Also Today Mothers who don't think about anything but their kids. By Leslie Lafayette

An even greater liability, perhaps, is Burkett's blithe, brief dismissal of any claim that caring for children is a community responsibility. On one hand, she says she is open to a discussion on the social value of raising the next generation:

I accept the proposition that discrimination can be justified in the face of a compelling social interest ... I'm prepared to entertain arguments about why there is a compelling need for us to transfer the wealth and energies of nonparents to those raising kids. But I still haven't heard them framed in any terms that justify giving upper-middle-class parents tax credits and child-care deductions, leave from work to watch Susi dance Swan Lake, or flex-time to check on the nanny.

But Burkett herself fails to initiate that discussion: She produces no zero-population-growth arguments, makes no call for a declining birthrate.

There is, however, a lot about "Baby Boon" that rings true. Burkett is an experienced reporter and a compelling writer, and she has done her homework. She makes her case persuasively and unrelentingly -- not just on behalf of the childless, but also for the families living in poverty for whom programs like HOPE scholarships are sadly irrelevant.

Burkett provides statistic after statistic to suggest that America is ready for a backlash against parenthood: the one in four women born between 1956 and 1973 who will never give birth; the 19 percent of married couples who have chosen not to have a child -- a figure that has doubled in the past decade, she notes.

She tracks the politicization of "family values," and maps the bipartisan machinations that led to the Family Medical Leave Act (the creation of which united liberals eager to support women in the workforce with conservatives hoping to keep moms at their children's sides). She questions the sense of entitlement that middle-class parents seem to have developed; and she asks uncomfortable questions about whether unpaid-leave policies, tax credits and tuition deductions -- which primarily benefit more affluent families -- are merely intended to pay white, educated Americans to reproduce.

And she lays down a call for change: She suggests that if we are seriously concerned about the status of underprivileged children, we should shift "pro-family" aid to benefit the low-income populations that need it most. She calls for "a national conversation about what claim middle-class and upper-middle-class parents have on the childless."

Burkett's is a conversation that many people may not be willing to continue. She makes some very good points, and in many cases I agree with her. But that doesn't mean I will be chatting up her case at cocktail parties anytime soon. Just try bringing up these ideas around parents -- you're likely to get some cold stares and uncomfortable pauses, as well as some good old-fashioned, in-your-face hostility. Appearing anti-child became a cardinal sin during what Burkett calls the "procreation-obsessed '90s," and I've got plenty of parental friends whom I'd prefer not to alienate over a public-policy debate.

Burkett's willingness to speak up in public, at the of risk being called a child-hating shrew, may be her book's most revolutionary tenet. But her expectation that her ideas may be translated into a revolution in policy is unlikely to be realized -- not only because of the multitudes who disagree with her, but also because of people like me: the observers for whom the political has not yet become personal, who agree in private but stay mute to keep the peace.
salon.com | April 6, 2000

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