Sheila Kamerman Quotes

Being a member of the labor force and a full-time parent means trying to manage against overwhelming odds in an unresponsive society.

Parents who are stressed or disturbed will have more difficulty in meeting their children's needs. Parents who have little support--from friends, relatives, neighbors, or the community--are more likely to be overburdened by the demands of their babies and to be unable to respond to them adequately. Parents who experience severe poverty or economic insecurity, who cannot satisfy their own basic needs, are likely to have difficulty in responding to their children's needs.

The "family" has clearly emerged anew in the late 1970s as a central subject for discussion, debate, research and writing in bothscholarly and popular arenas. Anxiety over whether or not the family as a basic social institution is dying has diminished. In its stead has emerged a fairly broad consensus around the position that the family is "here to stay," but that it certainly is changing.

What we have seen in the way of adaptation and adjustment seems to indicate that families are adjusting parenting to the world ofwork, rather than the labor markets and industries responding to the parenting and family needs of their employees.

There is growing consensus that new parents need help--information, advice, practical assistance--and that infants and toddlers need stimulation as well as care and nurture.