Finite Horizons: The American Family

In the summer of 1992, while I was reading and thinking about Martha Minow\u27s latest book, I was struck with my double role as a responsible adult. Vacationing in the north woods of Wisconsin with my mother, I suddenly needed to care for her as well as my own small children. Generational connections, important before, swelled hugely in crisis. As I caught my breath between hospital runs and kids\u27 activities, I was thankful that I had received so much from my parents during my childhood. And I resolved to rethink the relationships between parents and children, adults and elderly. Policy makers wonder why American children do not outshine their foreign counterparts on standardized tests and other measures of intellectual achievement. In a seemingly unrelated context, they ask why fathers systematically fail to meet their child support obligations and why an epidemic of reported child abuse exists. If children are a good, perhaps the most important product of a marriage and certainly the nation\u27s greatest capital asset, why don\u27t we invest in them? This paper argues that as adults we do not put our resources into children because we have lost one important benefit of our bargain. We cannot count on our progeny for support when we are no longer income-producers. If we look upon the historical family as an intergenerational relational contract, Western society has cut off a vital link. The break in the chain occurred when society prescribed that private family-based care of the elderly would be the exception rather than the rule. In doing this, in contrast to non-occidental societies, we have lost at least two valuable things. We have weakened the incentives for investment in children and we no longer enjoy the many valuable benefits that would otherwise come from senior citizens