The Culture of Fear (44 page)

74
Sharkey,
Bedlam,
chs. 5-6; Weithorn, “Mental Hospitalization,” pp. 796-97; Lamb, “Kids in the Cuckoo’s Nest.” See also Robert Friedman et al., “Psychiatric Hospitalization of Children and Adolescents,” testimony before the Florida State Senate, Tallahassee, 6 February 1990.

75
Greer and Greenbaum, “Fear-Based Advertising”; Mary Jane England, president of the American Psychiatric Association, interview with author, 31 May 1995.

76
Robert Friedman, “Admission of Minors to Psychiatric Hospitals and Residential Treatment Centers,” duplicated paper, Florida Mental Health Institute, Tampa, University of South Florida, September 1991; Eamon, “Institutionalizing Children.”

77
Sandra Blakeslee, “Child-Rearing Is Stormy When Drugs Cloud Birth,”
New York Times,
19 May 1990, pp. A1, 9; Michele Norris, “And the Children Shall Need,”
Washington Post,
1 July 1991, pp. A1, 8; “Crack Babies: The Numbers Mount,”
Los Angeles Times,
13 March 1990, p. B6.

78
Michael Dorris, “A Desperate Crack Legacy,”
Newsweek,
25 June 1990, p. 8; and see also Charles Krauthammer, “Children of Cocaine,”
Washington Post,
30 July 1989, p. C7. Foster mother quoted in W Russell Neuman et al.,
Common Knowledge
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 73.

79
Anastasia Toufexis, “Innocent Victims,”
Time,
13 May 1991; and Norris, “And the Children Shall Need.”

80
Norris, “And the Children Shall Need”; Toufexis, “Innocent Victims.”

81
Barry Zuckerman, “‘Crack Kids’: Not Broken,”
Pediatrics
89 (1992): 337-39; Drew Humphries, “Crack Mothers, Drug Wars, and the Politics of Resentment,” in K. Tunnell, ed.,
Political Crime in Contemporary America
(New York: Garland, 1993), pp.
31-48; John Morgan and Lynn Zimmer, “The Social Pharmacology of Smokable Cocaine,” in C. Reinarman and H. Levine, eds.,
Crack in America
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 131-70; Gretchen Vogel, “Cocaine Wreaks Subtle Damage on Developing Brains,”
Science
278 (3 October 1997): 38-39.

82
Associated Press story: Dana Kennedy, “Children Born Addicted to Crack Defy Experts,”
Los Angeles Times,
27 December 1992, p. A16. Joseph Treaster, “For Children of Cocaine, Fresh Reasons for Hope,”
New York Times,
16 February 1993, pp. A1, B4; Stephanie Mencimer, “Nursing a Miracle: A D.C. Story,”
Washington Post,
6 February 1994, pp. C1, 4. See also Bernard Gavzer, “Can They Beat the Odds?”
Parade Magazine,
27 July 1997, pp. 4-5. The
Post
eventually published a more neutral report: Susan FitzGerald, “‘Crack Baby’ Fears May Have Been Overstated,”
Washington Post,
16 September 1997, p. Z10.

83
Sheila Simmons, “Greater Cleveland’s First Crack Babies Are Now in School,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer,
11 December 1994, p. 8. Another example of a corrective story: Annmarie Sarsfield, “Struggles of a Mother and Son,”
TampaTribune,
9 April 1995, p. 1.

84
Humphries, “Crack Mothers”; Katharine Greider, “Crackpot Ideas,”
Mother Jones,
July-August 1995, pp. 50-56; and see letters to the editor in the subsequent issue. Chasnoff quotes: Kennedy, “Children Born” (“us-versus-them”) and Vogel, “Cocaine Wreaks Subtle Damage” (“poverty”). Government statistics: Richard Kusserow,
Crack Babies,
(Washington, DC: Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1990).

85
Toufexis, “Innocent Victims.”

86
ABC, “20/20,” 12 January 1996.

87
CBS, “CBS This Morning,” 19 January 1996.

88
Ibid.

1
Julia Prodis, “Odyssey Ends for Pregnant 10-Year-Old, 22-Year-Old Boyfriend,” Associated Press story in
Chicago Tribune,
25 January 1996, p. C2.

2
John Hiscock, “Fears Rise for Pregnant 10-Year-Old,”
Daily Telegraph,
25 January 1996, p. 3.

3
Jeff Franks, “Pregnant Runaway Older Than Thought, U.S. Officials Say,” Reuters, 25 January 1996; Tony Clark, CNN, 25 January 1996; Prodis, “Odyssey Ends.”

4
Michael Graczyk, “Pregnant Runaway Older Than 10, Officials Say,”
Austin American—Statesman,
26 January 1996, p. 3; Sandra Sanchez, “In Texas, Worlds Collide,”
USA Today,
29 January p. D1; Franks, “Pregnant Runaway.”

5
“Ricki Lake,” 3 January 1996.

6
Ibid.

7
NPR, “Morning Edition,” 11 September 1995. Whenever journalists focus on unusually young mothers without pointing out their novelty, they substantiate the misimpression. Another example was a
New York Times
article subtitled “Should a Pregnant Girl, 13, Wed Her Boyfriend, 20?” See B. Drummond Ayres, “Marriage Advised in Some Youth Pregnancies,”
New York Times,
9 September 1996, p. A10.

8
Diane Scott-Jones, “Adolescent Childbearing,”
Phi Beta Kappan
75 (November 1993): 1.

9
Sally Macintyre and Sarah Cunningham-Burley, “Teenage Pregnancy as a Social Problem,” in A. Lawson and D. Rhode, eds.,
The Politics ofPregnancy
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 59-73.

10
“Doomed,”
Newsday,
26 February 1995, p. A33; Claudia Morain, “A Freedom Fighter Packs for Washington,”
Los Angeles Times,
8 March 1993, p. E1; James Golds-borough, “The Unwed Birthrate,”
San Diego Union-Tribune,
28 July 1994, p. B11; Jean Bethke Elshtain, “The Lost Children,” New
Republic,
21 October 1996, pp. 30-36; Stephen Caldas, “Teen Pregnancy,”
Phi Beta Kappan
75 (January 1994): 402.

11
Alan Guttmacher Institute,
Sex and America’s Teenagers
(New York: Guttmacher Institute, 1994). See also Kristin Luker,
Dubious Conceptions
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). On my selection and use of statistics see note 2 in the Introduction.

12
Elizabeth Gleick et al., “Special Report: The Baby Trap,”
People,
24 October 1994, pp. 38-55; Joan Moore,
Going Down
to
the Barrio
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), p. 114; Deborah Rhode, “Adolescent Pregnancy and Public Policy,” in Lawson and Rhode, eds.,
Politics ofPregnancy,
pp. 301—26; Arline Geronimus, “Mothers of Invention,”
Nation,
12 August 1996, pp. 6-7; Arline Geronimus and Sanders Korenman, “The Socioeconomic Costs of Teenage Childbearing,”
Demography
30 (May 1993): 281-91; Diane Scott-Jones and Sherry Turner, “The Impact of Adolescent Childbearing on Education Attainment and Income of Black Females,”
Youth and Society
22 (1990): 35-53; Frank Furstenberg et al.,
Adolescent Mothers in Later Life
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Ann Phoenix,
Young Mothers
(Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991); Constance W. Williams,
Black Teenage Mothers
(Lexington, MA: Heath, 1991); Dawn Upchurch and James McCarthy, “The Timing of a First Birth and High School Completion,”
American Sociological Review
25 (1990): 224-34; Mike Males,
Scapegoat Generation
(Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1996); Emory Thomas, “Is Pregnancy a Rational Choice for Poor Teenagers?”
Wall StreetJournal,
18 January 1996, pp. B1, 12.

13
Ethan Bronner, “Lawsuit on Sex Bias by 2 Mothers, 17,”
New York Times,
6 August 1998, p. A14.

14
Sally Macintyre and Sarah Cunningham-Burley, “Teenage Pregnancy as a Social Problem,” in Lawson and Rhode, eds.,
Politics of Pregnancy,
pp. 59-73; Arline Geronimus, “Clashes of Common Sense: On the Previous Child Care Experience of Teenage Mothers-to-Be,”
Human Organization
51 (1992): 318—29; Congressional Budget Office,
Sources of Support for Adolescent Mothers,
Washington, DC, 1990. See also Judy Jones, “Babies of Teenagers Fare Well in Early Years,”
TheIndependent,
12 May 1992, p. 4; Shawn Hubler, “Some Teens Measure Success by Motherhood,”
Los Angeles Times,
12 November 1995, pp. El, 2.

15
Diane E. Eyer,
Mother-Infant Bonding
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), ch.3.

16
Geronimus, “Mothers of Invention”; Luker,
Dubious Conceptions;
Males,
Scapegoat Generation.

17
Statistics: Luker,
Dubious Conceptions;
Pat Wingert, “The Battle over Falling Birthrates,”
Newsweek,
11 May 1998, p. 40.

18
Elshtain, “Lost Children.”

19
Unsigned editorial, “Legislating Chastity,”
Nation,
20 March 1995, p. 365 (on “illegitimacy ratio”); William Eaton, “Shalala Revives ‘Murphy Brown’ Pregnancy Issue,”
Los Angeles Times,
15 July 1994, p. A1 (contains Shalala quote); Richard Wolf, “States Zero in on Out-of-Wedlock Births,”
USA Today,
21 November 1997, p. A4.

20
Joe Klein, “The Out-of-Wedlock Question,”
Newsweek,
13 December 1993, p. 37; David Broder, “Illegitimacy: An Unprecedented National Catastrophe,”
Washington Post,
22 June 1994, p. A21; Richard Cohen, “Dealing with Illegitimacy,”
Washington Post,
23 November 1993, p. A21. Another example: Charles Krauthammer, “Subsidized Illegitimacy,”
Washington Post,
19 November 1993, p. A29.

21
Timothy Biblarz and Adrian Raftery, “Family-Structure and Social-Mobility,”
SocialForces
75 (1997): 1319—41; Stephanie Coontz, “The American Family and the Nostalgia Trap,”
Phi
Delta
Kappan
76 (1995): K1—20; Constance Ahrons,
TheGood Divorce
(New York: HarperCollins, 1995); Susan Golombok et al., “Children Raised in Fatherless Families from
Infancy
,”
Journal of Child Psychology
&
Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines
38 (1997): 783-91; Arlene Skolnick, “Family Feud—Response,”
American Prospect,
July 1997, p. 16. See also Melissa Ludtke,
On Our Own
(New York: Random House, 1997); Diane Eyer,
Motherguilt
(New York: Times Books, 1996); Nancy Dowd,
In Defense ofSingle Mothers
(New York: New York University Press, 1997).

22
Research cited in Coontz, “American Family.”

23
Unsigned editorial, “Denying Honor-Society Status to Teen Moms Discriminatory,”
Ft. Lauderdale Sun—Sentinel
, 9 August 1998, p. G4; Haya El Nasser, “Unmarried Dads a Surging Social Phenomenon,”
USA Today,
12 June 1997, p. A7.

24
Clinton’s speech was delivered 15 November 1995. CBS “Evening News” broadcast was 9 March 1995. See David Blankenhorn,
Fatherless America
(New York: Basic Books, 1995); and for another example of the genre, David Popenoe,
Life Without Father
(New York: Free Press, 1996).

25
Tamar Lewin, “Creating Fathers out of Men with Children,”
New York Times,
18 June 1995, p. 1.

26
Laura Flanders, “Life Without Father,”
Extra,
September 1997, pp. 6-8 (contains Horn quote); CBS “Evening News,” 9 March 1995. See also Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur,
Growing Upwith a Single Parent
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

27
Lesbian parents: Charlotte Patterson, “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,”
Child Development
63 (1992): 1025-42, and “Lesbian and Gay Families,”
Current Directions in Psychological Studies
3 (1994): 62-64; Judith Stacey,
In the Name of the Family
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), ch. 5 (contains Blankenhorn quote); Deb Price, “Three New Studies Confirm Lesbian Parents Are Fit for the Job and Raise Well-Adjusted Kids,”
Detroit News,
25 April 1997 (online edition); Golombok et al., “Children Raised in Fatherless Families”; Nanette Gartrell et al., “The National Lesbian Family Study,”
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
66 (1996): 272-81.

28
Eyer,
Motherguilt,
pp. 132, 152. See also Judith Stacey, “Virtual Truth with a Vengeance,”
Contemporary Sociology
(in press); Ahrons,
Good Divorce;
Biblarz and Raflery, “Family Structure and Social Mobility”; Marsha Kline et al., “The Long Shadow of Marital Conflict,”
Journal of Marriage and
the Family 53 (1991): 297-310; Cynthia Harper and Sara McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration,” paper presented at meetings of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, August 1998.

29
Stacey,
Name of the Family,
pp. 139-40. See also Lillian Rubin,
The Transcendent
Child (New York:, Basic Books, 1996).

30
Vicky Phares, “Where’s Poppa?”
American Psychologist
47 (1992): 656-64; Demie Kurz,
For Richer, for Poorer: Mothers Confront Divorce
(New York: Routledge, 1995); Males,
Scapegoat Generation;
Arlie Hochschild,
The Second Shift
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1989); Deborah Rhode, “To Fault or Not To Fault,”
National Law Journal
(13 May 1996): A19.

31
Margaret L. Usdansky, “Single Motherhood: Stereotypes vs. Statistics,”
New York Times,
11 February 1996, p. D4.

32
Except as otherwise cited, media portrayals of Lopez are from Richard Goldstein, “Monster Mom,”
Village Voice,
19 December 1995, p. 21.

33
David Van Biema, “Abandoned to Her Fate,”
Time,
11 December 1995, pp. 32-36.

34
Ibid.

35
Katha Pollitt, “The Violence of Ordinary Life,”
Nation,
1 January 1996, p. 9; Bruno Bettelheim,
TheUses ofEnchantment
(New York: Knopf, 1976), p. 69.

36
Quotes from, respectively, Biema, “Abandoned to Her Fate”; Goldstein, “Monster Mom”; Michael deCourcy Hinds, “The Instincts of Parenthood Become Part of Crack’s Toll,”
New York Times,
17 March 1990, p. A8. For examples of media depictions of crack moms see also Douglas Besharov, “Crack Babies: The Worst Threat Is Mom Herself,”
Washington Post,
6 August 1989, p. B1; “Crack Comes to the Nursery,”
Time,
19 September 1988, p. 85; “Call to Remove Addicts’ Children,”
New York Times,
28 April 1990, p. A8; Jan Hoffman, “Pregnant, Addicted-and Guilty?”
New York Times Magazine,
19 August 1990, pp. 34—57. On the maltreatment of these women see Lisa Maher, “Punishment and Welfare: Crack Cocaine and the Regulation of Mothering,” in C. Feinman, ed.,
The Criminalization of a Woman’s Body
(London: Harrington Park Press, 1992), pp. 157-92.