The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resour...ces of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What we often take to be family values--the work ethic, honesty, clean living, marital fidelity, and individual responsibility--ar...e in fact social, religious, or cultural values. To be sure, these values are transmitted by parents to their children and are familial in that sense. They do not, however, originate within the family. It is the value of close relationships with other family members, and the importance of these bonds relative to other needs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our kids will develop a work ethic only if we require them to pay a portion of the cost of some of the things they want. They'll l...earn to defer gratification the moment we stop routinely pulling out our wallets. And they'll learn self-discipline only if we care enough to enforce reasonable limits.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't hap...pen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The media have just buried the last yuppie, a pathetic creature who had not heard the news that the great pendulum of public conci...ousness has just swung from Greed to Compassion and from Tex-Mex to meatballs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the Catholic world, one can leave one's home and wander in various fields, but the tents of the Church are large, its compassio...n great, forgiveness easy. The loss of home in Protestant living is more difficult, yet not shattering, for each man is still a part of the entire community who are bound by an impersonal ethic of love. But in Jewish life, each home is an island unto itself, and the severing of the ties of family and tradition causes a tremor which can never be settled. The position of the Jews through the centuries, a stranger in every land, no voice, no ban their own, deepens this traumatic condition. For not only have they no home as their own as a people, but within each alien culture the strange gods tear away the sons and there is no home in the family.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At breakfast this Saturday morning, the Indian ... asked me how I spent the Sunday when at home. I told him that I commonly sat in... my chamber reading, etc., in the forenoon, and went to walk in the afternoon. At which he shook his head and said, "Er, that is ver bad." "How do you spend it?" I asked? He said that he did no work, that he went to church at Oldtown when he was at home; in short, he did as he had been taught by the whites. This led to a discussion in which I found myself in the minority. He stated that he was a Protestant, and asked me if I was. I did not at first know what to say, but I thought that I could answer with truth, that I was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »