Home Alone

Media pundits and other observers have derided President Bush's recent veto of the family leave bill as evidence of a hypocritical stance on family values. They think his claim to be pro-family should include support for such bills. (He even implied as much during the 1988 campaign.)

But closer analysis reveals that Bush is subtler than these folks thought. His stance on the family leave issue actually fits perfectly with the image of womanhood implied in his administration's family values rhetoric.

If passed the bill would have required companies with 50 or more employees to grant them up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (with health insurance coverage) in the event of a family medical emergency or the birth of a child. Bush's criticism of this proposal was twofold. First, he expressed concern that more regulations would keep American business from competing well against foreign competitors. (He conveniently ignored the fact that most industrialized countries already have family-leave laws, which in some cases even mandate paid leaves.)

Second, and more important, Bush tossed a bone to traditional conservatives who believe that the essence of conservatism is keeping government from engineering citizens' private lives. The president remarked that policies about family issues should be "crafted in the work-place and not in Washington, D.C."

This latter point deserves closer attention. Despite his pseudo-libertarian rhetoric, Bush is hardly the man who's going to get government off our backs. His hard-line stance on abortion is the most obvious indication that he thinks certain family issues, like pregnancy, require governmental regulation.

Moreover, he did involve the government in the family-leave issue after all when he proposed, in place of the bill, a system of tax credits for companies which voluntarily give their workers family-leave benefits. This was a classic fence-straddling gesture: offering companies incentives to treat their workers humanely but not demanding that they do so.

Bush's remark about keeping government from determining a family's priorities was also rather disingenuous. Why would Vice President Dan Quayle make "family values" a campaign issue unless his administration believed not only that a certain type of family was best but also that a Republican presidency would help transform American families into that model? Clearly they imagine some role for government in the moral development of the family.

It may well be that this belief, and the image of womanhood implied in it, are among the unspoken motivations for Bush's veto. Rather than implying a cynical reversal of his "family values" position, his opposition to the family-leave bill is in fact consistent with his particular pro-family stance--his definition of family, that is.

The Republican party looks back, with partly justified nostalgia, to the days when the average American kid lived with two married parents, a daddy who worked and a mommy who stayed at home. And they have one good point: If one loving caregiver is good for a child, two are even better, especially when one is there full-time. Yet they go too far when they insist that this type of family not only functions better but is morally superior and right for everyone.

By vetoing the bill, Bush is trying to impose this family structure artificially on women by making them choose between their jobs and their sick or newborn children.

I emphasize women because the burden will fall more heavily on them. If they are single parents, they will have to leave work to care for their children because no one else will do it.

And if they are married, chances are that the stay-at-home parent will turn out to be mommy anyway. Men who quit their jobs to raise kids are still perceived as wimpy and unreliable by employers, who often expect women, but not men, to make their jobs a secondary priority.

The Republicans are right that a sick or newborn child would be better off with a full-time caregiver. But they seem to think that in families in which no one fills this role, selfish female ambition alone is to blame. In this context, the family-leave veto comes off as a punishment for rejecting what Marilyn Quayle thinks is women's "essential nature": child-rearing. If women don't want to raise their kids his way, Bush seems to be saying, businesses shouldn't be asked to make their lives easier.

But Bush chooses to ignore two realities: First, that most working women must work--their decision has as much to do with economics as with ambition. And second, that women who want to work should be able to do so without a social stigma.

Anyway, Bush's attitude actually prevents the very thing Republicans say they want to accomplish. Family-leave provisions would allow women to be at home for their kids without sacrificing the economic stability of a career.

But in the end, Bush's actions demonstrate that he's more interested in stigmatizing and coercing than in helping those who must juggle a career and a family.

The family-leave veto proves that for Bush, "family values" means "Women stay home."

Jendi B. Reiter '93 is an editorial editor of The Crimson. Her column appears every other Monday.