'Difficult Dialogues' conference focuses on the American family
BY LISA TREI
American society relies on metaphors such as "balancing" and "juggling" to describe how working mothers meet their dual responsibilities inside and outside the home. But education Professor Myra Strober puts it another way: "These women talk about going insane trying to meet two sets of impossible expectations."
Tens of millions of working mothers live in this country, Strober said, but not one question related to the concerns of this group was asked during the recent presidential and vice presidential debates. "We have a major problem that affects 24.5 million workers, and our politicians are not even talking about it," she said. "We need to act like this issue matters."
Strober, a labor economist, joined about 50 academics, policy experts and journalists from across the country on campus Oct. 16 to discuss families in America today. When Strober announced, "We need major media campaigns on this subject," Hillary Wicai, a reporter for the public radio program "Marketplace," replied that she recently had pitched related stories four times but was turned down because her editors said the leading presidential candidates were not discussing the subject. Ellen Galinsky, president of the nonprofit Families and Work Institute, noted that the October issue of Working Mother magazine has published a list of key questions posed by its readers to President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry and printed the candidates' responses. (Go to www.familiesandwork.org.)
"Valuing Families: A Debate Over What Works" was jointly organized by Stanford's Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) and the University of Maryland's Journalism Fellowships in Child and Family Policy. Print and broadcast journalists who report on family and social issues acted as moderators on four panels that weighed work-life topics, family diversity, efforts to support families and the institution of marriage. In addition to discussions on these subjects, scholars and journalists shared ideas concerning how to get more stories on these issues published in the mainstream media. For example, participants said a potential news story could be how the nationwide shortage of influenza vaccine supplies may have far-reaching ramifications for working parents this winter if they have to stay home to care for sick family members or themselves.
Sylvia Yanagisako, a Stanford professor of cultural and social anthropology, said the daylong conference concluded IRWG's two-year-long "Difficult Dialogues" on "The Changing Structure of the Family." In her introduction, Yanagisako said, "For some years now, the American family has been a lightning rod for politically charged debates about welfare, education, taxes, gender, sexuality and social equality." Discussions often deteriorate into polarized and polemical debates "that rely on recycled myths rather than on empirical research that illuminates the diverse realities of real families in our society," she said. As a result, public dialogue is often "fraught with misconceptions." One of the goals of the conference was to understand the research findings and varied perspectives of all of the participants, she said, "so that none are 'lost in translation,' but rather become part of the knowledge base on which policymakers and the public at large formulate informed decisions." Early next year, IRWG plans to publish a report on the conference and related "Difficult Dialogues" sessions aimed at policymakers and journalists.
In addition to Strober, Stanford panelists included Eleanor Maccoby, professor emerita of developmental psychology; Jeanne Tsai, assistant professor of psychology; and Michael Wald, professor of law. IRWG Director Londa Schiebinger opened the conference. Yanagisako said that the range of participants was not as wide as the organizers had hoped. Conservative commentators such as Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who has written on feminism and gay marriage, declined to attend, she said.
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