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  • The Abolition of Grandparents

    Lew Rockwell, CA
    April 3 2004

    The Abolition of Grandparents
    by Gary North


    A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the
    wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just (Proverbs 13:22).

    In this report, I'm going to give you some history (yawn), some
    sociological analysis (snore), and a suggestion on how to generate a
    stream of income that will keep you from starving on Social Security
    and the devalued dollar that it will lead to politically.

    The plight of America's grandparents is on my mind today because
    Thursday, I became one for the first time. I won't tell you that my
    grandson is cuter than yours was. That would be bragging. I will tell
    you that he is larger: 10 lbs., 11 oz. If your first thought is, "I'm
    glad I'm a man," you get the idea.

    Thirty years ago, my father-in-law, who was a remarkable scholar
    (30,000 books in his library, one of which he read every day for 60
    years), mentioned a social factor in Communist countries that he
    believed was a major factor that was hampering the advent of
    Communism's New Man: grandmothers. This was especially true, he said,
    in the Soviet Union. Both parents worked outside the home. Because
    there was so little housing space under Communism, it was common for
    grandparents to live in the same small apartment. So, when the
    children came home from school, grandma was there to tell them
    stories and thereby transfer part of the pre-revolution culture to
    them. The Soviet economy was so bad that the Communists could not
    afford to separate grandchildren from grandparents. This undermined
    the attempt of the Communist Party and the school system to
    indoctrinate the children in pure Marxism-Leninism. There was a
    conservative factor at the heart of Communist society that could not
    be eradicated.

    My father-in-law was alert to this factor because he was an Armenian.
    He was the seventh in a line of sons in his family who served the
    community as their minister. There was never any other occupation
    that his father had wanted for him. Until the Turkish genocide of a
    million Armenians in 1915-16, his family had stayed in the same town:
    Van. He told me that it was possible to trace his family back to the
    13th century in the church graveyard. In the church Bible that had
    been left behind in the exodus in 1915, his father had told him that
    there was a notation in the margin: "Today, the Mongols came
    through." That is what I would call cultural continuity.

    That family continuity was shattered the day his family got off the
    boat in New York City in 1916, where he was born. America does what
    the Communists could not do: remove the grandparent factor. The
    nuclear family, inside which grandparents do not live, is the norm
    here. In Armenia, there were sometimes four generations living under
    the same roof - a very large roof. That tradition does not survive in
    America, although "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" shows that some Greek
    communities come close.

    In my father-in-law's family, all of the three children went through
    divorces. (A fourth child had died in the family's exodus across the
    border into Russia.) America has this effect on families.

    MOVING ON

    Paul Johnson is my favorite contemporary historian. He writes better
    than the rest of them, and he writes smarter. His book, The Birth of
    the Modern (1991), is 1,100 pages long, yet it covers only 15 years:
    1815 to 1830. My favorite chapter is Chapter 3, "The End of the
    Wilderness." All over the world, cheap land was opening up: in
    Russia, in Argentina, in Brazil, and above all, in the United States.

    Perhaps the most potent of all American virtues, in European eyes,
    had nothing directly to do with good government. It was the price of
    land. In the early decades of the 19th century, good land - land that
    was accessible and secure, ready to be cleared and worked by an
    industrious family with a small capital - was cheaper than at any
    time in history, before or since. It was a unique moment, which could
    never conceivably happen again (p. 209).

    So, Europeans came here. By the millions, they came. The birth rate
    had been very high in America, but the survival rate was the highest
    on earth. Ben Franklin had noted this fact half a century earlier. If
    anything, the survival rate accelerated.

    In America, from the beginning, community bonds had little power
    because of cheap land. In his 1963 book, Puritan Village, Sumner
    Chilton Powell describes the break-up of Sudbury, Massachusetts,
    because the town fathers wanted to control land sales and allocation.
    The sons walked out in protest and started another town, Marlboro.
    This became the American way. Never in man's recorded history has
    there been geographical mobility to match America's.

    This is still true. Families in America move, on average, once every
    five years.

    The Westward movement in the 19th century was immense. The invention
    of the steam-powered boat in the era covered in the early pages of
    Johnson's book was followed by the invention of the steam railroad at
    the end. The railroad accelerated geographical mobility as no
    invention ever had in history. It became possible to go 40 miles an
    hour or faster, sitting in a bump-free compartment, reading a book.
    With a covered wagon, 30 miles a day was making good time. In a
    train, 30 miles an hour was nothing special, and the train traveled
    all night.

    In America, a man could take his wife and children and head west.
    >From 1800 until the 1870s, this probably meant that the grandparents
    would not see their grandchildren again. Saying goodbye was not a
    formality. It was a permanent break in family continuity. Of course,
    most people stayed close to home, but the westward movement was so
    great a factor that Americans learned to shape their local
    institutions in terms of it. We were the first society in history to
    do this. Nomads had always moved, but they moved as communities. Not
    in America. Families moved, and they kept on moving. It was cheap to
    relocate. As economics tells us, when the price of anything falls,
    more of it will be demanded.

    CHEAP LAND, HIGH WAGES

    When one factor of production is cheap, the complementary factors of
    production become more valuable. In Western Europe, land has been
    costly ever since the 15th century. It was relatively cheap only
    after the bubonic plague of 1348-50, when a third of the population
    died in three years. Families in Europe still keep the rural
    homestead in the family for three or four centuries.

    In a society that has high land costs, labor is not paid well.
    Mobility is too costly. People stay put. Opportunities are few. In a
    society with cheap but productive land, labor is paid very well. Why?
    Because labor is mobile. A man can move somewhere else, where the
    cost of living space is lower. Local employers must bid against the
    opportunities that beckon. The grass is always greener on the other
    side of the river. Dreams lure productive men to distant locations,
    where their talents face less competition.

    Americans have a 350-year tradition of pulling up stakes, as we put
    it, and heading for greener pastures. This is considered normal. It
    is even considered desirable. In Europe, in Great Britain, both
    English and Scottish, young men moved to the colonies. In Asia, only
    China has a tradition of moving away, and only in a few provinces. I
    don't know how long this tradition has operated. The offshore Chinese
    have been a major phenomenon, which is one reason why China is a
    formidable competitor today.

    The willingness to move for the sake of economic opportunity is
    fundamental in most entrepreneurial societies. Think of the "movers
    and shakers" economically: the British, the Dutch, the Jews, the
    Armenians, and the Chinese. They are all noted for their willingness
    to move. Only the Japanese seem to break the rule. Instead, they have
    imported culture, though not immigrants.

    No society has ever been greener-pasture-motivated to the degree that
    America has. Geographical mobility is a fundamental aspect of the
    American way of life. "Your papers, please" is not a phrase that
    Americans have been willing to tolerate. The government is slowly
    infringing on this. If you fly on a commercial airliner, an industry
    heavily regulated, you must present identification with a photo. But
    you can always get on a bus, get on a train, or get in your car. You
    can even thumb a ride. If you want to get from here to there, you can
    do it cheaply in America.

    GRANDPARENTS IN THE WILDERNESS

    This has led to the isolation of American grandparents. Geographical
    mobility of sons and sons-in-law has always loosened the ties of
    grandparents to grandchildren in America. Now the rising divorce rate
    has made these emotional ties high-risk between paternal generations.
    Fathers lose custody of their children. If they get two weeks in
    summer, the grandparents may get a few days of this. That is about
    all they can expect. They become distant appendages in the lives of
    these grandchildren.

    The positive aspect of social and geographical mobility is obvious to
    most Americans: more freedom to choose and more choices. Our society
    is the envy of the world. Almost every other society on earth wants
    to imitate us. This is a worldwide social revolution in a way that
    Communists dreamed of but could not attain through force. But the
    acids of modernity do eat away at the foundations of every social
    order, including ours. There are no free lunches in life. There are
    trade-offs. There are winners and losers. The great losers in America
    are grandparents. In second place are grandchildren, especially those
    ages three to ten.

    Society's link to the past has always been maintained by
    grandparents. In America, we have replaced this link with tax-funded
    schools. The yellow school busses that pick up children are the
    visible sign of this transfer of social authority. Now that the
    public schools are disintegrating, and have been for four decades,
    Americans who fear the effects of the school system are pulling their
    children out. But home schooling is done by mothers, not
    grandmothers.

    This had left grandparents with more free time, but less meaningful
    work. They have more money and more political clout than oldsters
    have ever possessed, but the price has been a social segregation that
    is not much discussed. A friend of mine 35 years ago once described
    Sun City as "the elephant burial grounds for the white middle class."
    This was accurate, except it is for the upper middle class. Sun City
    and similar communities keep out children of school age in order to
    keep property taxes low: no public schools. I understand the logic,
    but I also recognize the price: a world without family ties.

    Parents say, "I never want to move in with my kids. I don't want to
    be a burden." Then they vote for Social Security and Medicare, i.e.,
    stick it to everyone else's kids. They substitute the State for the
    family as the legal caregiver. This does to oldsters what the same
    political process does to parents: it makes them socially irrelevant.
    While there are no visible marks of this transfer of power that match
    the yellow school bus, the transfer is equally powerful. Americans
    have voted for a State run by bureaucrats with their tax money.
    Americans have transferred to tax-funded bureaucrats the social
    function of preserving society's links to the past.

    Then the television set breaks what few links survive this two-fold
    severing: parents from children, grandparents from children and
    grandchildren. Children today are being shaped mainly by the public
    school and the television set. Parental influence is slipping away.
    Grandparental influence no longer exists as a meaningful social
    factor.

    The war for our children, and therefore for the future of American
    society, is being fought between the public school and the TV script
    writers and their associates on Madison Avenue. Parents are becoming
    bystanders. Grandparents are not even bystanders.

    WHO WILL TEACH CHILDREN TO PRODUCE?

    Schools teach children to obey. Television teaches viewers to spend.
    Who teaches youngsters to produce?

    Parents used to. They knew that they would become dependent on their
    children in their old age. Their children were their capital. This is
    still true in rural India and rural China, but it is fading fast even
    there.

    Grandparents have always provided positive sanctions. They have
    rarely provided negative sanctions. Parents concentrate on pulling up
    weeds. Grandparents are allowed to water flowers. Parents discipline
    children. Grandparents spoil grandchildren.

    In the old days, this spoiling process had a side-effect: linking the
    child to the past. They went to visit grandmother, and grandfather
    was allowed to impart general wisdom to the grandson, while
    grandmother taught the granddaughter to make cookies. (I am not
    speaking of Hillary Clinton's grandmother, I suppose.)

    We learn by seeing, then by doing. This is not bureaucratic
    education. Bureaucratic education for the average student is learning
    by reading and - when young - by reciting. The education of the rich
    and powerful in prep schools concentrates on writing and public
    speaking: rhetoric. But public school teachers are hard-pressed just
    to maintain order. They don't like to grade papers. They prefer to
    give objective tests: true/false, multiple choice. In junior college,
    a machine grades these tests.

    Who will teach our children the skills that are necessary to become
    economically productive? Bureaucrats reproduce themselves in the
    classroom: obedience counts far more than creativity. Teachers are
    paid to maintain order. If there is actual teaching going on, no one
    cares too much, one way or the other, unless the teaching is superb.
    Then envy takes over on the faculty. Pressures are applied. The
    creative teachers eventually leave. If you want evidence, go to
    Google and search for "John Taylor Gatto."

    Grandparents for thousands of years watered the flowers. Their
    unofficial job was to discover what a child did well and encourage
    the child to do it even better. It was the parents' task to maintain
    order. Uprooting weeds was the parents' task. The grandparent could
    concentrate on more productive matters.

    "Grandma, look what I made!" was followed by, "That's wonderful!"
    Then, "Would you like me to show you how I made those when I was a
    little girl?" In every society I have ever read about, there is some
    version of this crucial verbal exchange. We can mark the decline of a
    society by the departure of this verbal exchange.

    THE DAY CARE

    In our day, grandma is distant. Mom works outside the home. The
    children are farmed out - an ancient phrase that has little economic
    relevance today - to day care centers. Then, when the yellow buses
    roll, they are farmed out to the public schools. The latch-key child
    is the result.

    Mom works because the State extracts 40% of most families' incomes.
    This is the result of voting patterns of grandma's generation and her
    parents' generation. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets . .
    . worse. Social Security/Medicare is going to take an ever-larger
    percentage of working parents' income.

    The day care is therefore as sure a business venture as the home for
    invalids.

    I am a grandparent. I am not planning to become dependent on Social
    Security/Medicare. I also do not plan to move in with my children. I
    am mostly hoping none of them moves back in with me. So, I plan to
    open a day care. I have looked at the economics of day care. I know
    of no more obvious way to make a lot of money. I have written about
    this in the past.

    Most people my age won't do this. There is too much hassle. This is
    not true of home-based day cares. If they started a home-based day
    care, they could easily pull in an extra $30,000 a year. In Alabama,
    which allows 12 children in a home, it's closer to $60,000 a year.

    The economics are astounding: $100/week/child, 50 weeks a year.
    That's $5,000. Multiply this by 5 or 6 children -- 12 in Alabama.

    Then do what grandparents have done for millennia: teach.

    Teach them phonics. Read to them. Let then do show and tell. (They
    love show and tell.) Let them run around in your fenced back yard.
    Teach them songs. Teach them manners.

    Pay attention to them. "Watch me!" may be the second most popular
    phrase for pre-schoolers. "Why?" is the most popular phrase. Put both
    phrases to good use.

    If your grandchildren are far away, let local parents pay you $30,000
    a year to rent your professional grandparent services.

    If you don't think you are capable of doing this, start a free day
    care for two or three children for three months. You're just
    entertaining a few children for the day, with their parents' written
    permission. Since it's not a business, you don't need to get the
    business zoned. You don't need licensing. You may not need insurance
    beyond what you've already got. Try it. See if you like it. Then, if
    you like it, go through whatever zoning hoops are in place to open a
    home-based day care. There are few licensing rules.

    Have mothers pack the lunches and snacks. Don't get into the
    meal-preparation business. But you can bake cookies with a little
    help from your friends. Think of it as a treat. Think of it as
    educational. Think of it as enraging Hillary.

    If you want a free manual on the basics of running a full day care
    program, which is a lot harder than running a home-based day care,
    click here.

    I have encouraged the author to write a shorter version for home day
    cares. He says he will. But don't wait. Skip the chapters on
    licensing and similar barriers to entry that do not apply to home
    based day cares. Just read the chapters on teaching, curriculum, and
    discipline. Also read the chapter on Social Security. That ought to
    motivate you!

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north263.html
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