Parents Want Safety, Not Family Values

Politicians who believe that welfare cheats, gay marriages or even abortion are high-priority concerns for American parents are seriously off the mark, a new study has shown.

Rather than espousing an abstract, ideological “family values” agenda, this country’s mothers and fathers want to ban handguns, protect kids from violence and improve the quality of public education, according to a study released today.

The survey, conducted by an independent, international polling firm, Penn + Schoen, for the National Parenting Assn., shows a consensus that crosses class, racial and gender lines.

“Parents share an urgent set of concerns and rally around a common agenda,” said Cornel West, a Harvard University professor of Afro-American studies and a National Parenting Assn. board member. West called the survey results “remarkable, in that they show an unexpected unity” among parents.

The nationwide telephone survey of 500 mothers and fathers from among the nation’s 58 million was conducted in mid-September. In hopes of attaining a mainstream sampling, welfare recipients were excluded. Income levels among respondents ranged from $20,000 to $100,000 per year.

Sarah Lawrence College professor Raymond Seidelman, a specialist in electoral politics who helped interpret poll data, described the survey as one of the first systematic efforts to find out how parents view issues affecting family life.

Nearly unanimously, parents said they wanted less rhetoric from government and business institutions and more practical help. They also expressed widespread concern about the strain of balancing work with being a parent: 84% said they are having a tougher time balancing work and family responsibilities than their parents did.

Parents demonstrated a strong commitment to community. Rather than joining civic organizations, however, many said they volunteer on an ad hoc basis--coaching soccer and so forth.

That finding, said researcher Craig Charney of Penn + Schoen--also President Clinton’s polling firm--flies in the face of “what has become the conventional wisdom about the decline of civic spirit.”

The survey also found that mothers and fathers want government and employers to do more to help parents. Among policies endorsed by parents were:

* Federal tax breaks to help parents pay for college expenses--supported by 94% of those surveyed.

* Tax incentives to encourage family-friendly employer policies, such as benefits for part-timers and flexible work hours (94%).

* Laws requiring gun makers to install devices that make it harder for children to fire weapons (89%).

* Keeping schools open longer for classes, homework or clubs to better match the typical workday (77%).

Crime (30%) and drugs (21%) topped parents’ list of worries. Education was the second major theme, with 17% mentioning schooling quality. Only 3% of parents placed teenage sex and pregnancy as important family issues; 1% named TV and movie sex as a priority. Not one parent in the sample spontaneously brought up homosexuality or abortion as a major concern.

University of Texas sociology professor Norval D. Glenn, former editor of the Journal of Family Values, said the findings confirm the notion that parents are concerned with “very practical issues,” not with the abstractions of politicians and others.

The “family values” debate has failed to concentrate on such day-to-day issues “because they are too nitty-gritty,” Glenn said, “and because public figures think they can make political capital out of these abstract ideological issues--which they probably can.”

“I don’t think for most people it’s a big government-little government kind of issue. They don’t formulate it in those ways. They want the government there to do things that will be of immediate assistance--that is, to make policy that helps them as families.”

Economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founder of the 3-year-old, nonprofit National Parenting Assn., said she was struck by the respondents’ “total willingness to lean on government and the private sector.. . . All this stuff about no one liking government anymore is ridiculous.”

At the national headquarters of the PTA in Washington, director of governmental affairs Arnold Fege concurred: “There’s really a large group of forgotten parents--parents who are not included in the family values discussion . . . who just want a good school for their kids. They want their kids to know how to read. They’re worried about safety and high academic standards. And they are just not being heard.”