The War Against Parents

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, noted feminist scholar and child advocate, and Cornel West, Harvard philosopher and well-known human rights leader, join in a rare partnership to explore one of the most painful problem of our times. Why are hundreds of thousands of American children “dangling and dangerous” and millions more failing to thrive? At the heart of our children’s agony is a frightening erosion of the parenting role – not because parents are less devoted than they used to be but because the whole world is stacked against them. Big business, government, and the wider culture are waging a silent war against parents, undermining the work they do. Adults raising children have been harmed by managerial greed, pounded by tax and housing policy, and invaded and degraded by the entertainment industry. In The War Against Parents, Hewlett and West present a blueprint for parent empowerment, which they call a G.I. Bill for the Twenty-first Century. United behind an agenda that spans the divides of race, gender, and class. The War Against Parents is both a visionary and an intimate book. Hewlett and West explore their childhoods — strangely similar stories of growing up in family-centered blue-collar communities in Wales and California — and with striking candor tell of their struggles to be a good mother and a good father in our parent-hurting society. Lending moral heft to the work parents do, Hewlett and West provide comfort and hope. There is not a parent among us who is not hungry for such healing.