Community Essay : ‘Mothers Have Become Scapegoats’ : Blaming Mom makes it easy to ignore massive shifts in economic, political and social realities.

Working mothers aren’t home. Welfare mothers aren’t working. You need a thick skin to be a mother in America today.

Chastised by politicians, the media and just about everyone else for not instilling proper family values in today’s children, American mothers have become scapegoats for an uncertain society struggling with changes too tough for even Mom to fix.

In a recent three-hour special on violence in America, CBS and Morley Safer claimed that families (read “mothers”) provided “not enough family discipline, nurturing. Indeed, too little love.” Conservative Republicans have no trouble finding a forum for speeches attacking modern family values.

As the mother of three school-age children, I’m incensed. Scapegoating is a dangerous game. The blamers can throw up their hands and walk away from the problems caused by massive shifts in economic, political and social realities. No one has to do anything if the fault lies squarely on someone else’s shoulders.

There are millions of families like mine, headed by guilt-ridden, hard-working women who are receiving less support from society than any other generation in history.

Children need adult attention--that in-your-face attention that families have traditionally provided. But extended families with a stay-at-home adult are rare. Budget cuts have wiped out the ranks of the community youth workers dedicated to molding young people in their parents’absence. And while nightly news broadcasts rail against the modern American family, corporate executives in the “leaner, meaner” American workplace call for workers to do more for less and cast an evil eye at those of us who are distracted by family matters.

Instead of shaking a finger at families who are stretched to the breaking point, aware and frantic about their shortcomings, why aren’t lawmakers and the media chastising a society that has turned its back on its youngest members. Why aren’t they promoting parenting as a community-shared responsibility, showing us how we--the community, businesses and individuals--can make a difference and ease the stresses of raising children in the ‘90s?

It is a tough time to raise children. But it would be a whole lot easier if we started thinking of child rearing as a community effort. Our leaders and the media should be out there hammering that idea into our heads instead of scaring us into a deepening isolationism that threatens the very fabric of society.