How Money Culture Hurts the American Family
“Whatever the ideological and economic realities of the moment, children and the old need to be cared for—they don’t go away simply because the realities of work have changed.”
This week we are joining with the Human Network Initiative at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital to launch a new essay by the philosopher Ian Marcus Corbin. This essay explores the mechanisms that created and now sustain America’s approach to the nuclear family, the economy, and the care of children and elders. Ian examines the consequences of a culture that values the outcomes of extraction over human flourishing and provides recommendations for how to influence culture and create a society where families and children flourish. You can read the full essay here and an excerpt was recently published in The Washington Post.
“Working parents can and should raise their voices and demand a way of working that allows them to be present, active caregivers for their children.”
This essay aims to help us understand more clearly the depth and dimension of the problems that our families and their children face in the third decade of the 21st century. Ian is a philosopher of culture and thus he approaches the challenges we face with a philosopher’s facility and a respect for the formative power of culture. Our cultural presuppositions shape our politics and our policy, our education systems and our corporate decision-making, the virtues we celebrate and the vices we tolerate -- they are the substructure of our common life. At Capita, we believe that we must spend more energy and effort interrogating those presuppositions to arrive at the greater clarity that politics, policy, and investment focused on the well-being of young children and their families demands in this moment of adversity. As with everything we publish, this essay is intended to contribute to a public dialogue and foster debate about securing a brighter future for children and families. We welcome you to join the conversation.