It Takes a Village
Twin Cities Business Monthly, April 1999
By Mitchell Pearlstein

Back before it became universally recognized that the real purpose of "villages" is to keep on eye on her husband, Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a book about how it "took a village" to raise a child. Most of the criticism directed her way at the time noted that while villages and other sorts of communities obviously are important, even more critical in bringing up children are parents -- preferably two per kid.

In fact, while much was made about how the First Lady took the name of her book from an African proverb, word on the street (at least in conservative neighborhoods) was that she employed only half the adage, as the complete line went something like: "It takes a village to raise a child, but what it really takes, first of all, are a mother and a father."

I can't vouch for the validity of the claim, but I have no trouble making the argument (I'm really a broken record on the point) that the extraordinary rise in fatherlessness over the last four decades is our nation's severest social problem -- and that no amount of community support or solicitude could ever compensate for the loss.

Yet while downplaying the importance of two-parent families remains the biggest shortcoming of the aphorism (at least as translated by the First Lady), I've come to realize its limitations in another, expanded fashion.

Of course boys and girls are almost always shortchanged, in a multitude of tangible and more emotional ways, when they are denied the daily presence of both a mother and father in their lives. But I've also come to better understand, at a very practical level, how the inexhaustible efforts of two parents (no fewer) often are required to adequately engage a village in the first place. This is especially the case if the children in question are unusually troubled or ill or otherwise demanding.

I write here from very personal experience. Without getting into more than a fraction of detail, my wife, Diane, and I are the adoptive parents of an eight-year-old girl whom, it's fair to say, had an abysmal start in life. As a result, she needs quite a bit of medical and professional help in excising many more demons than any child should be expected to disgorge.

Again without delving into detail, you need to know that the only reason -- and I underline only reason -- that our daughter is receiving the exceptional care that she has been blessed with recently is that Diane and I continue to wage nonstop guerrilla warfare on her behalf with insurance bureaucrats, county bureaucrats and others.

Our antagonists are almost always decent men and women, certainly. But at bottom they must be understood as emissaries of institutions disposed to giving most "clients" little more than the back of a procedural hand. Such organizations are no more equipped to grasp our daughter's life and appreciate her circumstance than they are to grasp and hold firm to the wind. These are tough words. They're written with transparent anger. But they're accurate and just.

At the very same time, not incidentally, that we have been doing battle regarding our daughter, my wife has been trying to help a friend and her family from disintegrating, financially and in other ways. A naturalized American, our friend is seriously ill and unable to work. But not only was she turned down twice (unfairly, I believe) when she petitioned for federal disability assistance, she reports that she was never even told about other programs she is eligible for, including unemployment insurance.

How will she eventually fare? Reasonably well, I would like to think, but only because my wife is a retired social worker and a pro at these kinds of frays. As a relatively new, not completely socialized citizen, our friend would barely have a chance in navigating the system ("systems," really) without the help of someone like Diane.

Actually, all modesty aside, Diane and I make up a great partnership in slaying behemoths. She is very good at knowing what agencies to call, what rules to cite, what forms to fill out, etc. For an intuitive person, she can be very methodical.

As for me, I'm trained at the doctoral level in how organizations work. But perhaps my most apt strength is that I'm originally from Queens and have a temper. Also, I'm not opposed to reminding those who block my way that I write magazine and newspaper columns -- and how is it that you spell your name exactly?

But it's not just that our skills complement each other's. We're a good team because we are a team. Meaning, on those occasions when one of us is spent or incapable of sparing one more moment away from work to make one more phone call, the other is likely able to do so.

The point to be made here, returning to the top, is not merely that bureaucracies can be brutal. Or that the villages envisioned by the First Lady are necessarily thick with them since they are also rich with governmental agencies.

The main point, instead, is that it's hard to imagine how single parents -- heroic but overwhelmed and poorly prepared as they often are -- have the wherewithal to tap into resources for their children that might well be available, but which, given the very nature of big institutions, be they public or private, may not be easily accessible.

Which is one more way of affirming the wisdom of the presumed second half of the African proverb: The only villages, goes a new variant, that will consistently succeed in raising children -- especially troubled children -- are those in which the great majority of boys and girls are nurtured by moms and dads who not only love them madly, but who, when called on, can fight like crazy for them in both orchestrated and cacophonous concert.

-- Mitchell B. Pearlstein is president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.