One such code stifles discussion of the crisis of parenting, and particularly of mothering. Witness the reflexive rejection of recent data suggesting a link between aggressive behavior and time spent in day care. Even 70 percent of married women with preschool children under 6 have some sort of work-force participation. Judgments about illegitimacy and the normality of mothers in the work force take one into the minefields of feminism. Today's regnant utopianism, feminism, continues modernity's project of emancipating mankind from necessity, including nature.
Feminism aims to break the bonds of anatomy and deny that biology is in any sense destiny.
Another study reports that between 1965 and the late 1980s, the amount of time the average child spent interacting with a parent declined 43 percent, from 30 hours a week to around 17. Recently, yet another study reported some improvement, but not in single-mother homes. The fact that many children need help and supervision with homework connects parental absenteeism with the mediocre performance of American students. One study finds that children home alone for 11 or more hours a week are three times more likely than other children to abuse alcohol, tobacco or drugs. And as home-aloneness has increased, so has sexual activity, and sexually transmitted diseases, which infect 3 million teenagers a year.