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Mary Eberstadt writes in Home-Alone America that growing obesity, the high incidence of sexually transmitted disease among teenagers and an overdependence on drugs such as Ritalin for attention deficit disorder are often the fault of parents who "outsource" their responsibilities.
"We tend to think that the problems with juveniles are located at the bottom end of the social spectrum, but latchkey children are more common among the affluent," said Eberstadt, a mother of four who is a conservative writer and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
According to the most recent figures from the US Census Bureau, 41% of children aged 12 to 14 regularly look after themselves at the end of the school day. The figures rise with prosperity. For children aged 5 to 14, "self-care increases from 11% of children in poverty to 22% of those with family incomes at least double the poverty line."
Eberstadt’s book is dividing sociologists, critics and partisans in the "mommy wars" between stay-at-home and working parents. A child clings to the ankles of his smartly dressed mother to stop her leaving for work on the front of the book; he does the same to his father on the back.
P. J. O’Rourke, the conservative commentator and satirist, supports Eberstadt’s thesis. "If you don’t think (her) arguments have merit, try treating your dog the way America treats its kids," he said.
"Give the puppy her own set of house keys and put her in front of the television instead of taking her for a walk. Let her eat anything she wants and house train herself. Send her to another master for visitation at the weekends. And when she comes into heat, turn her loose in the pound."
James Q. Wilson, author of The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families is one of the intellectual forces behind zero tolerance policing. He praised the book’s "great, unarguable theme that parental care is of decisive importance in shaping the character of our children".
Feminist critics, in contrast, accuse Eberstadt of Taliban-style thinking. The Washington Post attacked her "seductive" but "nasty" opinions and lack of "interest in how real people live or think about their lives".
Eberstadt insists that she is not ordering women back to the home. "The bottom line is a lot more nuanced," she said. "It doesn’t have to be ’you’ there after school, but there are not enough protective, supporting, loving adults around."
Neighbourhoods, she added, "are so emptied of adult presence that even the richest kids just go home, throw the deadbolt and get no exercise more strenuous than walking from the video game to the refrigerator." The result of being home alone is not just snacking and obesity but casual sex, leading to an explosion in venereal diseases that can lead to infertility and cervical cancer, Eberstadt said.
Mary Eberstadt would mostly agree（）
A．the problems with juveniles are located at the bottem end of the social spectrum.
B．women shall not go out to work but stay at home.
C．children in rich families are lack of exercises.
D．leaving children alone will lead to many diseases.
