The case for a U.S. workplace flexibility law

Trying to put a million people together has a way of amplifying their voices. The Million Man March demonstrated this in 1995, and gave rise to the Million Gay March, the Million Mom March, the Million Youth March, the Million Moderate March - each with its own agenda.

Now comes 1 Million for Work Flexibility - conducted online, appropriately enough, for those who prefer to telecommute to this virtual event.

The timing of the online campaign is perfect, says Kenneth Matos, an industrial and organizational psychologist with the Families and Work Institute, a Manhattan think tank.

"We're at the end of the fad stage," Matos says of the initial era, when flexible work schedules produced success stories for a smattering of companies and employees. And some want flexible work to become law. "That's a conversation we're going to have over the next couple of years," Matos predicted.

The pressure is building because that previously unpaid force of caregivers - women - is now more and more in paid jobs and unavailable for child care or elder care. The United States has neglected to put in place a national child care program, although some states are offering universal prekindergarten. But the other care crunch, an aging U.S. population, will be a growing dilemma.

Sara Sutton Fell, a Boulder, Colo., entrepreneur, launched 1 Million for Work Flexibility last week at WorkFlexibility.org. The site asks visitors to leave an email address and expect updates. Since 2005, Fell has run a national service, FlexJobs. She has a team of 36 people working around the country - mostly from their homes.

"I wanted to inspire people and give them a way to show their support for work flexibility, to contribute to the greater voice," Fell said in an interview. "So much of what happens depends on individual corporations, and it's moving very slowly."

In England, parents with young children and those caring for sick relatives have a legal right to request flexible work schedules, without being fired or punished for asking. That can include matching work hours to coordinate with children's school schedules, job-sharing, going part time or concentrating work into certain times of the year or days of the week. Employers don't have to grant the request, but they must provide a reason for denying it.

England is now debating whether to extend this right to people caring for someone with dementia. Jeremy Hunt, the country's health services secretary, calls the increase in dementia care "a time bomb," predicting that the number of caregivers will grow by a quarter to 850,000 by 2020.

In this country, San Francisco's board of supervisors has passed the Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance. Beginning Jan. 1, workers who have caregiving responsibilities will have the right to request changes to their working conditions to meet those obligations. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and then Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) sponsored national versions that failed.

Nationwide - or even corporate - policies are needed, Matos says, because many employees are reluctant to request time off for family obligations. It can be seen as the equivalent of saying one is not committed to the organization.

More employers will move toward offering flexible work to retain people, Matos believes, but that won't persuade every employer. "For generations," he says, "the marker of your commitment was that you were there at work."

Perhaps the 1 Million for Work Flexibility will change that. Surely, the need for families to care for loved ones isn't going away.

Successful nations de-emphasize school sports. Should we?

Parents are understandably distressed when U.S. high school students score badly in math, science and reading compared with kids in other countries.

There has been an endless series of seemingly fruitless education reforms here at home to deal with the gap. Now comes an intriguing approach based on the insights of U.S. exchange students who spent a year in some of the most successful high schools in the world - in Finland, Poland and South Korea.

Author and journalist Amanda Ripley followed three exchange students for her new book, "The Smartest Kids in the World - and How They Got That Way," and argues that a way to improve academics and help American students compete in the modern economy is to de-emphasize school sports.

Instead, the United States should bring its sports-like passion and intensity to academics, she concludes. "High school in Finland, Korea, and Poland had a purpose, just like high-school football practice in America," she writes. "There was a big, important contest at the end, and the score counted."

Sports are a distraction, Ripley argues, and most countries require them to take place outside of school. Trading in our school sports culture would require a huge change for Americans, who revere teamwork and sportsmanship as training for life. Whole communities are built around school sports teams, and colleges reward student-athletes with admissions and scholarships.

But playing down sports could pay off, as it has elsewhere, if we redirect money, focus and glory to learning.

One exchange student, Kim, studied in Finland, where she noticed that "the students here care more. They see how what they do now will affect them. It's more real to them."

Jenny grew up in South Korea and moved to New Jersey with her family for high school in 2011. She put it this way: "Kids in Korea have this thing inside them. They feel this necessity to study and get a good job and have a better life."

Finland ranks first in science, second in reading and third in math on the PISA - the Program for International Student Assessment - that's given to 15-year-olds. (The United States ranks 12th in reading, 17th in science and 26th in math.) PISA looks not at the test-takers' ability to memorize knowledge, but to reason and think critically.

South Korea ranks first in reading, second in math and fourth in science. Ripley is critical of memorization in Korean education, but she praises its high goals and the freedom students have to fail and recover through hard work - good lessons for American parents.

Too often, we don't ask teachers to give our kids harder assignments - and we're quick to complain about a failing grade. What's working elsewhere is to set ambitious goals for kids, and then allow them to discover that they have it within themselves to reclaim success from failure.

Each of the countries in "Smartest Kids" came to education reform after an economic crisis. Finland was losing jobs after graduating just 10 percent of its teens from high school in the 1950s. Today, the graduation rate is 95 percent.

Poland's wakeup came in 1999, as students consistently tested below average in reading. By 2009, they were outperforming U.S. students in all three PISA measures. In just a decade, Poland changed course, despite having similar levels of child poverty as the United States, and in spite of spending half the money per pupil.

Have the Great Recession and sluggish recovery been sufficient to persuade Americans to raise our school standards? We've tried so many "reforms" in education. Maybe what we need is a truly radical shift away from sports in favor of schooling.

A 2013 date - with 2016 in the air; speech just one stop in Hillary Clinton's still-busy public schedule

Hillary Clinton isn't a name that draws a halfhearted response. Most people have a distinct opinion, good or bad. So, it will be intriguing to see how she plays to a crowd of pre-eminent Long Island businesspeople tomorrow - a familiar audience of mixed political allegiances.

This is, of course, exactly the type of monied crowd Clinton needs if she runs again for president. Her talk isn't billed as a campaign speech. We are waaaaay too far ahead of 2016 for that, right? And it would be bad form for Clinton to talk about presidential ambition just a year into the second term of her fellow Democrat and former boss, Barack Obama. Not to mention that as a New Yorker, her governor may also covet the job.

Formal announcements aside, this event presents an opening for the recently retired secretary of state. It's an opportunity for her to reintroduce herself - four-plus years after stepping down as New York's junior senator.

Most of us know this woman, this leader, through filters - usually, the media, but also our friends and neighbors. Another filter was in the works until Monday: a four-hour miniseries from CNN Films and NBC. The Republican National Committee voted in August to boycott the networks during the presidential primary debates if the "Hillary Clinton infomercials" were produced.

CNN and NBC pulled the plug on the project this week, but said it wasn't the GOP's threat that scuttled the program, it was that Clinton and her aides refused to participate.

Given the acrimony from the RNC, it was probably wise of Clintonland to keep their distance. But I also have to wonder if Clinton isn't just a little weary of having herself explicated by the media, no matter how well-intentioned.

Here's what her husband, Bill, had to say Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Speaking about "anybody" who runs for president next time, he said, "You have to have a strategy for presenting your true self to the voters in an environment where there are unprecedented opportunities for those who don't want you to win to paint a different picture of your true self."

How many people have written tell-alls about the "true" Hillary Clinton? I found a dozen books during a quick Internet search - not to mention groups like Citizens United, which produced an anti-Hillary documentary that led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that corporations have free speech rights.

Meeting with audiences looks like a priority for Clinton now. Her speaking schedule is busier than an Affordable Care Act Web server. In September, she accepted a Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and addressed the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau. She drew a crowd for a social services agency in Chicago and booked gigs with the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Beth El Synagogue in Minnesota.

Tomorrow is her chance to tell New Yorkers what she saw and learned as secretary of state. The audience at the Crest Hollow Country Club is going to want to know her views on the crisis in Syria, Obama's rapprochement with Iran, the domestic surveillance controversy and the evolving role of the United States as the world's cop.

LIA members will want to hear Clinton's predictions on how health insurance reform will shake out. And there's a good chance she will mention her project to measure the progress of equal participation of women around the world, which she announced last week at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting.

Is she warming up the crowd for her next act - whatever that is?

The myth of 'takers' vs. 'makers'

This essay first appeared in Newsday.

An acquaintance of mine often rants about people who do no work and live on government handouts - while she has to work for everything she has. She runs a cash business, and I suspect her belief that the government supports lazy oafs is how she justifies hiding her earnings from the tax man.

Once, tired of her rants, I asked, "Have you met any of these people who live off the government? I haven't met anyone like that."

She mumbled something I couldn't make out.

My friend couldn't produce any examples because this vast population of "takers" is a myth. Yet this myth has hardened like a knot in the gut. Many of us feel we've lost ground financially since the 2007 economic collapse, and some find refuge in this politics of resentment.

The resentment often attaches itself to President Barack Obama, who has presided over these tough times. I hear it from doctors and others in health care who feel that Obamacare will squeeze their earnings. Another acquaintance told me that, as whites, my daughters will grow up second-class citizens in the majority-minority Obama world. Watch his immigration policies closely, this person says with a conspiratorial gleam.

When I counter with facts about Obama's record of deporting people here illegally and white Americans having fewer children, this acquaintance doesn't want to hear it. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt so exhaustively argued in "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion," we humans intuit our opinions first - in our guts - and find reasons and arguments to buttress them later.

So it seems with the House Republicans and food stamps. The House voted last week to cut spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $40 billion over 10 years, or 5 percent. Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) relied on a biblical passage from 2 Thessalonians to defend his vote: "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat."

That's pretty harsh, given that households with children, elderly or disabled people receive 83 percent of food stamp benefits. Would we prefer these people to be out on the streets begging, as in so many other countries that don't have a social safety net? Hey, mademoiselle, carry your bag?

House Republicans like to say that the food stamp cost to taxpayers has more than doubled in four years, from $38 billion in 2008 to $78 billion last year. When he was running for president in 2012, Newt Gingrich called Obama the "food stamp president."

Those numbers are high, but they disguise other important truths. First, the food stamp program was structured so that everyone who qualifies can receive aid. Its growth has everything to do with the millions of jobs that were lost in the recession.

Second, many food stamp recipients do work. Unemployment is still high, and many people have taken part-time jobs or lower salaries. If they earn up to 30 percent more than the federal poverty level of about $30,000 a year for a family of four, they can combine their wages with the program benefits to put food on the table every day.

Finally, food stamp spending should eventually shrink on its own. As the economy improves, the Congressional Budget Office predicts, the number receiving benefits in the next decade will drop by almost 28 percent.

Is it really humane to grab food from people's mouths now? My gut tells me it's not.

Of course, the politics of resentment will whisper fables that lazy, cheating food stamp recipients are duping us. We may never know for sure, but I'm inclined to risk a little duping if it means that children, old people, the disabled and the working poor have a meal.

Don't believe the unemployment rate; joblessness is higher than government statistics say

The unemployment rate fell again in August, to 7.3 percent, down from 8.1 percent a year ago. Time to celebrate, right? That must mean 92.7 percent of adults are employed! Good times!

Well, not exactly. The unemployment rate only measures people who have actively looked for work in the past four weeks. It's a tremendously deceptive measure that ignores millions of discouraged and freelance workers, yet the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been using it since the 1940s. In fact, the labor force participation rate - the percent of the U.S. adult population that has a job - isn't anywhere near 92.7 percent; last month, it was 63.2 percent, nearly the lowest level in 35 years. Good times?

The official unemployment numbers mask a couple of trends - one undeniably bad, but one potentially good. A significant group that isn't counted in the unemployment rate comprises people who've given up looking for work - so-called discouraged workers. Some aging workers have retired early and unwillingly, after finding that many employers won't hire people in their 50s, 60s or 70s. A friend in investment banking tells me he never runs into anyone older than 60.

With people living longer, those who retire before they're ready may not live as securely as they'd hoped. Few baby boomers can rely on a pension. Also among discouraged workers are the 4 million-plus who have been unemployed for six months or more. Between 1948, when the government began keeping these records, and 2009, this group had never numbered more than 2.9 million. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has called long-term unemployment a "national crisis."

Yet another group is discouraged college graduates who couldn't find work and went back to school for a graduate degree, hoping to return to the job market in better times. They're putting off doing many of the things that would stimulate the economy, like buying homes, cars - and Baby Bjorns. We need a better way to measure joblessness, so there is sufficient pressure on political leaders to further job creation.

Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC last week that talk of war in Syria is a distraction from our needs at home. "[The] truth is that a largely dysfunctional Congress has difficulty today focusing on the very serious issues facing our country: the disappearing middle class, high unemployment, low wages, the high cost of college, the decline of our manufacturing sector and the planetary crisis of global warming," Sanders said. "I fear very much that U.S. involvement in another war in the Middle East, and the cost of that war, will make it harder for Congress to protect working families."

Now, for the promised better news: There are many more people working than the Labor Department tallies. According to Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of Freelancers Union, official numbers haven't kept up with the changes in the new workforce. Blogging at freelancersunion.org, Horowitz argues that the government ignores people who have abandoned the 40-hour workweek and instead work project to project. She estimates that 42 million people are independent contractors, nearly a third of the workforce.

This is, potentially, a very good development. It gives individuals more control over their time - hello, work-life balance. And companies may be more willing to pay project by project, rather than commit to hiring employees with all the attendant retirement and health benefits.

Good jobs with benefits are the ideal, of course. But even a freelance boom is better than a modest dip in a bogus unemployment rate.

Conservative sheriff opts for liberal alternatives to jail time

This essay was first published in Newsday. Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DeMarco is an unusual kind of sheriff. What law enforcement chief doesn't want a bigger jail? But he is doing all he can not to build.

On a recent Thursday morning, DeMarco eviscerated an 82-page report by the Suffolk County Probation Department that said the department is doing a great job of clearing the jail of nonviolent, low-level offenders, and preventing them from returning. DeMarco spoke to the county legislature's Public Safety Committee and made enough of an impression that it appears the legislature will vote on Sept. 14 to have an outside consultant come in to check the Probation Department's math.

That's important, because unless the sheriff can prove that he can move people out of jail and reduce crowded conditions, the state is going to force him to build space for 440 more beds at a cost of $100 million, even as Suffolk faces a $250 million budget deficit.

In an interview, DeMarco said of the Probation Department, "These guys go to conferences around the state and B.S. everybody. They tell everybody how effective their programs are." He went on to say, "But it's outdated and incomplete data. I like these people; I work with them every day. It's not personal."

You have to hand it to him, that's blunt. That's because overstating the effectiveness of the probation system makes it harder to get low-level criminals into the alternative programs that could have a better chance of keeping them from returning to jail down the line.

It's an excellent position for a Conservative Party sheriff to take during a re-election campaign: Save the county $100 million. But DeMarco has been cross-endorsed by every major and minor party in the county, and he probably doesn't have much to fear electorally from his opponent, Sam Barreto, a Suffolk canine unit police officer who is challenging him in the primary for the Republican line.

Still, it's remarkable that DeMarco's fiscal conservatism is marching him directly toward liberal criminal justice policies. He likes to tell a story about the first time Bob DeSena asked for a meeting. DeSena is a former New York City high school teacher and the founder of Council for Unity, which has brought together rival black, white and Latino gang members to work out their differences at the Suffolk County jail in Riverhead. DeMarco told his secretary to interrupt the DeSena meeting after 10 minutes.

"I thought he was nuts," DeMarco said.

But in the years since, the sheriff has spearheaded such life-changing programs for "justice involved" young people - teens who are facing jail time and perhaps a life of cycling through the criminal justice system, unless someone helps them.

DeMarco's youth re-entry task force in Suffolk, and the youth tier initiative at the jail, have just won recognition from the National Association of Counties. The sheriff has embraced the counseling and housing services of Hope House Ministries in Port Jefferson and Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in Riverhead.

Soon, with the sheriff's support, District Court Judge Fernando Camacho will open a youth court - similar to the veterans, drug and mental health courts in Suffolk County - to make sure teenagers have every opportunity to turn their lives around.

Camacho spoke recently to a gathering of representatives from Suffolk County youth agencies. In his 30 years as a judge, he said, he's seen the same types of problems plaguing kids who show up in the criminal justice system at 16 or 17: an absent father, an addicted mother, a string of foster homes, learning issues, fighting in school, drug use.

"That person is angry, really angry," Camacho said. "If you take that 16- or 17-year-old and lock them up for three years, you're going to have one angry 20-year-old coming back into your community."

For reasons of mercy or money - who cares which? - Suffolk is trying to end that cycle.

Closing the only psych ward for kids is disastrous

In a decision that seems as ill-timed as possible, the state Office of Mental Health announced last month that it will close its only inpatient children's psychiatric program on Long Island. Families in crisis, with delusional or suicidal children, will in the future be required to travel to Queens or the Bronx.

The added human misery that this decision is likely to rain down on some Suffolk and Nassau residents is immeasurable. That it comes so soon after a string of mass murders by people with mental illness - just seven months after Sandy Hook - is inconceivable.

"It came as a surprise," said Dennis Dubey, former executive director of the facility that is closing, Sagamore Children's Psychiatric Center in Dix Hills. "It's a surprise that throughout the rest of the state, OMH is saving money by consolidating children's centers into larger hospitals, but that only on Long Island are they totally eliminating beds."

After a six-week "listening tour" - geared to reassuring mental health employees that they will be eligible for other state jobs - the Office of Mental Health published a report on July 11 saying that the center will close in 14 months - but offered no plan for winding down services. Local leaders are supposed to suggest something by Oct. 1.

"To me that's sketchy," Dubey said.

The state report is titled "Regional Centers of Excellence," but you won't find any discussion of excellent treatment within its 57 pages. The entire focus is on cost and changes in insurance, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. The plan could save $20 million over three years. I'm in favor of government saving money, but dropping services to the most vulnerable - poor, possibly abused and desperate - is foolish.

The 57-bed Sagamore center is a waystation where children - usually between 9 and 17 - can step out of their lives, feel safe and begin getting support with their families involved. The facility also offers classes to keep students up-to-date with their schoolwork. Several current and former employees say there is a continual waiting list for the nationally recognized program.

OMH says it is committed to expanding Long Island's community-based services - outpatient care - which keeps kids close to their families and in school, and to minimizing the need for hospitalization.

But sometimes inpatient care is necessary. When it is, shipping children away could prevent families from participating in their recovery and worsen their prognosis, says Emily Engel, a psychologist who interned at Sagamore. She wrote a letter to leaders in Albany protesting the closure. "How many times does a mass shooting occur - when people then ask why warning signs were missed, why that clearly mentally ill individual did not receive help? SCPC is the type of facility that evaluates and treats the potential school shooters, that treats child victims of rape and violence."

Fern, a Sagamore worker who did not want her last name used, said many of the children improve and go on with their lives. "We see so many - we call them clients - who are now working and going to college."

To be sure, New York has more psychiatric hospitals than any other state - 24, compared with five in California. But Americans have begun to question the wisdom of the decision in the 1980s to dismantle the mental health care system. We only need to look to many of the homeless people wandering our streets, the high suicide rates - especially among teens and returning veterans - and the mentally ill people who pack our jails, receiving no support to help them get well. Abandoning people to their inner demons is not "excellent."

Dr. Ronald Marino, the associate chair of pediatrics at Winthrop-University Hospital, said general hospitals like his are ill-equipped to handle kids who come to the emergency room with suicidal thoughts, extreme panic, drug abuse and eating disorders. And yet, they're seeing more of them. Marino believes that media violence and economic pressure on adults to hold many jobs - among other stresses of modern life - are finding their way to young people.

We must stop pulling the supports out from under them.

Corporate social responsibility, in Bangladesh and at the diner

This essay was first published in Newsday.

The clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed 1,129 workers in May tragically dramatized the need for a movement that's been building for two decades: corporate social responsibility.

The idea of this movement is that good behavior can be cultivated among employers through a combination of public pressure and consumer purchases - rewarding companies with loyalty when they show care for the environment or treat workers well. It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but in fact 57 percent of Fortune 500 companies issued reports about their environmental, social and governance strategies in 2011, more than double the previous year, according to the Governance & Accountability Institute, a research firm.

These are leading companies protecting their reputations. And, as business guru Warren Buffett says, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and just five minutes to lose it. Just ask BP PLC, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, or Apple Inc., following the revelations about poor working conditions and suicides at its Foxconn factory in southwest China. Although Apple sales remain strong, the company has agreed to rounds of audits of its factories by labor and environmental organizations.

The trail of responsibility for the factory collapse in Bangladesh led to western retailers that sell clothing made there. Of course, giant American retailers didn't inspect the Rana Plaza building for safety violations - that was the job of the Bangladeshi government - but they chose to buy the clothing from poorly regulated countries, in exchange for low-low prices.

Last week, in a nod to corporate social responsibility, Wal-Mart, Gap, Target, Macy's and other retailers agreed to donate $42 million for worker safety in Bangladesh, including inspections and an anonymous hotline for workers to report problems. One global activist group, Avaaz, launched a Facebook and Twitter campaign to pressure Gap to sign, when it looked as though that company might not. The Internet has put reputation management on steroids.

Of course, it's possible we shoppers will see higher prices for clothing now, as a result, but the peace of mind will be worth it. "Someone selling a T-shirt for $1.50 is taking big risks," Philip Rooke of T-shirt seller Spreadshirt.com told USA Today. "It is not possible to do it ethically."

Wouldn't it be great if stores had a way of signaling to shoppers that the $2.50 we're now paying for a T-shirt means we can rest easy that nobody died sewing it? Like the disclaimers in films - "no animals were harmed in this film's production" - or fair trade stickers on coffee and chocolate, or the triangular "recycled" logo on paper products.

A seminal thought leading to corporate social responsibility was the idea of a "triple bottom line" formulated in 1994 by British planner John Elkington. He said companies could go beyond reporting their bottom-line profit to a broader measurement of environmental and social achievement. It became known as the Three P's: profit, planet and people.

Personally, I think we need more emphasis on the people. I would be willing to pay more for a restaurant meal if I knew the waitress were able to afford child care. "The Third Shift," a report issued last week and funded by the Ms. Foundation for Women, showed that, with a federal minimum wage for tipped workers of $2.13 an hour, it's nearly impossible to pay for safe, high-quality care given the unpredictable, late hours.

Or perhaps we could devise a sticker or a logo to convey to consumers that a given company offers paid sick days - 38 percent of American workers don't have them - or paid maternity/paternity leave.

Those are my priorities; others will have their own. A diverse workforce? A no-layoff policy? A smaller carbon footprint? Profit-sharing? The possibilities are plentiful when capitalism adopts a social conscience.

9 reasons this mom regrets staying home with kids

This essay was first published in Newsday.

More than two decades after leaving her job on the trading floor of a London bank to stay home with her three children, Lisa Endlich Heffernan has written an essay titled "Why I Regret Being a Stay-at-Home Mom." Published recently on The Huffington Post, her piece drew nearly 800 comments and more than 14,000 "likes" on Facebook.

The comment she relishes for succinctly summing up her point is this: "When I look at how amazing my kids are, I do not have regrets. When I look at my career and passions, I have only regrets."

It's the sort of rearview calculation familiar to those of us 50 and older. But Heffernan's midlife lament lands at a moment when millions are asking themselves such questions. In an interview from her Westchester home, she described three broad reactions.

"One of the big surprises was from young women," Heffernan said. "I had a rush of comments from women on maternity leave or just back saying, 'Every day I wrestle with myself, whether this was the right decision or not.'"

They are grateful. They told Heffernan they might have anticipated one or two regrets she disclosed, but not the full nine. "My world narrowed," was one. And another: "I used my driver's license far more than my degrees," including an MBA from MIT.

Other comments came from stay-home moms in their 40s and 50s who praised Heffernan's courage for speaking up. They felt the same way.

And then, she said, "There was the hate mail" - stay-home moms who felt criticized. To them, she responds, "I do not presume to speak for one other woman on this planet." The essay was purely personal.

But of course, we are living a moment in history when these "personal" questions have been dragged into the public square for a full examination. Heffernan, who blogs at GrownAndFlown.com, believes that's because baby boomers were mostly raised by moms who stayed home or held "women's" jobs instead of managing high-stress careers. So, the change is unsettling. Also, the Internet lets us converse with thousands - instead of two or three friends, who probably thought the same way we did, as in years past.

Work-family debates also likely draw so many defensive, injured voices because they affect a much larger group today. Having a parent at home is no longer an option for most middle-class families, as wages have declined over 40 years and layoffs have ratcheted up job insecurity. In 1975, about 47 percent of mothers were in the labor force, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now, it's almost 71 percent.

But even as the temperature of the debate mounts, so does the importance of holding it right out loud. Heffernan's openness does a service for younger people weighing their choices. I work full time now, but I've played other roles; my husband and I stayed home with our two daughters for about three years each. We didn't plan it that way; we made it up as we went.

For another perspective, I spoke to Frederick Goodall, who blogs at MochaDad.com. He and his wife have traded off staying home with their three kids. They're younger - Generation X - and believe many of their peers see staying home as old-fashioned.

But Goodall thinks society has short-shrifted parenting. "We need women to understand - and guys too - that family responsibility is just as important as work responsibility."

The key to having a parent at home may be setting material sights lower. "You have to start budgeting for it, if it's something you really want to do," he said.

Will we be hearing from Goodall in 10 years about his career regrets? That's hard to know. But I hope if we do, we'll tell him to lighten up on himself. Easy choices these are not.

Snowden has performed an act of patriotism

At the moment, squirrely data contractor Edward Snowden doesn't look much like a hero. He's reportedly still holed up in a neutral wing of a Moscow airport, searching for a country to protect him from the U.S. government's espionage charges. He's leaking information about the United States spying on its allies, in an apparent effort to embarrass President Barack Obama.

Not heroic, no. In fact, just the opposite. But on this day we celebrate the founding of our democracy, and I believe that Snowden made choices that reaffirm the founders' values. In a democracy, the government's work shouldn't be shrouded in secrecy. Snowden's revelations have exposed policy-makers to needed public debate.

Of course, some secrecy is necessary. But there's evidence that our government's reticence goes well beyond the demands of national security. The Defense Department only last year declassified the Pentagon Papers, 40 years after they ran in American newspapers. Shhhh!

Snowden originally appears to have acted out of conscience. The former National Security Agency techie said he leaked information about the government collecting millions of telephone records and emails in the hope of provoking a national dialogue about surveillance and secrecy.

As a result, we have received vital reassurance from federal officials about how they use this data. To our great relief, we now know that officials aren't reading each email message or listening in on phone calls. The NSA says it sifts for patterns that may reveal terrorist plots. If a computer program catches something suspicious, agents must still obtain a court order to look at the stored data. Officials have also been forced to justify the surveillance by detailing thwarted terrorist plots.

Admittedly, the reasons for Snowden's recent declarations seem less noble. He told a Chinese newspaper that the NSA intercepted the private mobile-phone text messages of millions of Chinese. And a German magazine published his reports of the United States' electronic monitoring of European Union offices and computer networks. Starting trouble for Obama with other governments seems merely vengeful on Snowden's part.

Of course, the president is after him. He wants to put Snowden on trial for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 - the same law under which Pfc. Bradley Manning now faces court-martial. Manning could be sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of giving classified U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. I doubt very much that the military court will consider whether Manning served democracy when rendering its verdict.

Government's first inclination is not to preserve democracy, but to preserve itself. So, it's no wonder Snowden is running and hiding. But that doesn't erase the good that has come from his bravery.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Washington did nothing in response to Newtown killings

Remember the righteous calls for action coming from federal officials after the Newtown, Conn., shootings? That horror in which six adults and 20 first-graders lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School? Who could forget?

Apparently, Washington.

During these two months that Congress has been in session, no significant money, emergency training or legal safeguards have been approved for the mental health system - at least not that the federal government will supply.

There's hope, however, because we live in a country where average people - make that, extraordinary people - are acting to help families and therapists who might be able to predict delusional violence but too often can't prevent it.

Here's a rundown of disappointments from our nation's capital.

When the president's gun-control bill failed in April, so did an amendment to teach "mental health first aid" to emergency workers, teachers and others who interact with people struggling with mental illness.

Although President Barack Obama launched the first White House Conference on Mental Health on June 3, to begin a national dialogue about mental illness, associated funding proposals are on hold because of the federal budget sequestration.

The Affordable Care Act will require new health plans to cover mental illness as they do physical illness, because of the federal Mental Health Parity Act of 2008. But nobody knows how to enforce that law, because in the five years since it was passed, the Obama administration still hasn't written the rules.

"There's been a lot of talk, but no action and no money. Everybody's forgotten about" the promises, says Carolyn Reinach Wolf, a lawyer with offices in Lake Success and Manhattan who has developed what may be the country's only mental health law practice.

Over two decades, Wolf has represented families in crisis navigating hospitals, insurance companies, courts and social services. Gaining a stable life, for seriously mentally ill people, can take many years and temporary failures. Living through this with her clients, Wolf has witnessed where the law makes the battle more agonizing and protracted.

She's one of the extraordinary people working on two changes to federal law. The first would modify confidentiality so that families, if they meet certain criteria of involvement and support, can receive confirmation that their loved one is in treatment, and can discuss medications and the treatment plan - instead of hitting the silent wall of therapist-patient confidentiality.

Second, Wolf wants to alter the standard for involuntary commitment. Right now, the only reliable way for a person in trouble to get help is if he or she threatens suicide or to harm someone else. Wolf would reduce the bar to include those who could benefit from inpatient care and treatment - for example, because they have in the past.

Wolf's ideas will rankle civil libertarians, but her long bouts with the mental health system add weight to her words.

Some other extraordinary people are "The Blinking Cowboys," three young men profiled in Newsday earlier this month and so named for their flashy green outfits. Brothers Matthew and Christopher Prisco, and their friend Brian Gallagher, will travel to 50 states this summer. In 2009, Matthew and Christopher's mother, Kathleen Prisco of Fort Salonga, was charged with stabbing their father to death and was found not guilty by reason of mental disease and defect.

You can follow the cowboys' summer travels on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as they seek to refocus the notoriety about their father's death to assist other tortured families. They want to raise public awareness and encourage others to seek help.

Maybe they can show Washington what it means to turn tragedy into positive action.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Persuasive film on anti-nuke zealots who changed their minds

Director Robert Stone made his reputation with documentaries such as "Radio Bikini," which in 1988 exposed the hazards of nuclear testing, and "Earth Days" in 2009, which celebrated the rise of environmentalism. So it's startling to witness the pro-nuclear power message of his film opening this week, "Pandora's Promise."

Stone begins with the story of his own conversion from anti-nuclear to the conclusion that "the rapid deployment of nuclear power is now the greatest hope we have for saving us." Along with his transformation, Stone gathers on camera five prominent activists who've traveled the same path from "anti" to "pro," including anti-Shoreham activist Gwyneth Cravens.

"Pandora's Promise" is intended to follow on the 2006 success of "An Inconvenient Truth," which woke many to the threats of global warming. At the same time, that film divided environmentalists who can't agree on the greater evil: nuclear power or climate change.

Stone's effort to repair the rift gives the film its name. Once the horrors had flown from Pandora's mythical box, in the bottom was hope. Nuclear power offers the hope of near-zero carbon emissions.

This compelling documentary pushed me further along my own conversion path. Among the thousands of faces the camera pans from the 1979 "No Nukes" concert in Battery Park City, I'm there with my college pals. "No nukes" is how I felt then, but now I am open to the possibilities.

In another New York moment, "Pandora's Promise" tells of the epic fight over the closed Shoreham nuclear power plant. "People were so afraid of it that they shut it down," says Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the film's converts to support for nuclear power.

That's too dismissive of Shoreham's history, of course. No valid evacuation plan, in case of an accident, was ever approved for Long Island.

This film is a full dose of strong opinion - and also supplies some much-needed facts. For example, "Pandora's Promise" reports that all the nuclear waste generated in U.S. history could fit in 10-foot-high barrels covering a single football field. New-generation reactors may actually use recycled nuclear waste. And nuclear warheads from Russia, reprocessed, are supplying 10 percent of America's electricity.

According to the World Health Organization and the United Nations, only 56 deaths can be tied to the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, which is a design of reactor that's no longer built. Greenpeace and other activists claim that 1 million died. And the deaths and radiation poisoning widely feared after the Fukushima explosions in 2011 haven't happened.

"If you are exposed to the fallout from Fukushima ... the increased risk of getting cancer is estimated to be so infinitesimally small that you would never be able to identify its impact," says Mark Lynas, a British author and blogger on climate change.

Using a handheld digital device, Lynas finds more radioactivity coming from a sidewalk weed than on a Fukushima beach. Yet the interviews with Japanese parents who keep their children indoors because of fears of radioactivity are heart-rending.

"You can't reassure people," Lynas says. "People are so terrified ... because they don't have that background context of what radiation means, they can't actually decide for themselves what's safe."

New Yorkers will unfortunately have limited access to this film - at least in the first round. It's scheduled to screened at the Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side this week, in Rhinebeck beginning July 12, and in Albany starting July 19.

"Pandora's Promise" deserves wider distribution. It's essential viewing for anyone who cares about today's energy decisions.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Archie Bunker would be a 'birther' today

We open to a couple seated at a piano, their shoulders amiably pressed together as they move to the music. The man plucks a cigar from his lips and begins in a baritone, "Boy the way Glenn Miller played ... "

Then the wife: "Songs that made the hit parade!" - delivered in a nasal screech that is as unselfconscious as it is grating. Lovable Edith Bunker, as played by Jean Stapleton, who died Friday at age 90, was the good-hearted "Dingbat" who made Archie Bunker bearable - even comical - despite his stony bigotry.

Stapleton's death reminds us of the glory of "All in the Family," the daring sitcom set in a modest Queens living room that spoke truth about racial prejudice, gender inequality, ethnic bias and religious animosity like nothing else on television before its January 1971 premiere. Archie Bunker was the aggrieved working-class white man who saw his world as changing too fast - "Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days!"

What would a guy like Archie be doing if he were alive today? (Actor Carroll O'Connor, who played him, died in 2001.) Which issues would he groan about from his favorite armchair, beer in hand?

The most obvious is a black president of the United States. Bunker had little regard for "spades," and was hostile toward interracial couples. I picture him today as a "birther" - calling for copies of the birth certificate, passports and school transcripts from President Barack Obama -- or, Barry Soetoro, as some modern Archie Bunkers call the president, using the surname of Obama's Indonesian stepfather, presumably to make the president seem deceitful and foreign.

Archie would object to women holding roughly as many jobs as men today. "Ms., Ms., Ms. I hate that 'Ms.' It sounds like a bug," Archie tells Edith when she comes home to serve him his dinner - late - after her women's club meeting. "What is the matter with the way you're running your life here, anyway? Huh? It's the world's oldest profession, running a house."

Modern Archie would blame the problems of the economy and schools on single mothers. They're responsible for the huge increase in food stamps, they don't teach their children discipline or manners, and they're too busy to help with homework, he'd probably say. The burden falls to the classroom teacher - and, ultimately, for school costs, to taxpayers. "The Democrats' way of running this country is to go tell us all how we ought to make sacrifices," Archie says in one episode. "I'm sick and tired of people ... giving away my hard-earned money to a bunch of families who ain't even related to me."

Similarly, he'd have a few words for immigrants who fail to assimilate into American culture. One episode has Archie facing a judge with his arm in a sling. The judge explains that Archie's assailant has been released because the arresting officer read him his rights in English, which he doesn't speak or understand. "No bum who can't speak perfect English ought to stay in this country," Archie says. He "ought to be de-exported the hell outta here."

And Archie would have sided with National Rifle Association leaders who proposed armed guards in schools after the Newtown, Conn., shootings in December. Archie suggests in one episode that the way to end plane hijackings is to "arm all the passengers."

The more I think about it, the more it seems that Archie Bunker thrives among us today. Maybe it's time for another TV parody to shed light on some of the ignorance, resentment and hatred.

Stapleton had this to say about the nine-season "All in the Family," in an interview in 2000: "It was very honest, very funny, at uncovering a lot of bigotry and prejudice and nonsense."

Those were the days.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Kids' worth is more than a sum of their grade cards

It's that time of year again. Memorial Day is behind us, and the end of the school year will be here before we know it. Graduating seniors know where they're going to college, and high school and middle school students have learned whether they'll be attending honors classes and advanced placement courses - or not. Some elementary school kids were accepted into gifted and talented programs.

Based on these academic measures, we parents judge ourselves accordingly. Have we been successful?

I thought about this recently on the phone with my mother-in-law, who didn't work outside the home. I asked, "What's new with you?" She said she didn't have any big news. No Nobel Prizes or Pulitzers.

Parenting doesn't have such concrete accolades. There are no bonuses or tangible rewards for performance. It's a subjective enterprise that one day can seem wonderful and the next, dreadful. So, we look to proxies - like college acceptances and honors classes - to tell us how we're doing.

But parents give over too much power to the schools - and especially college admissions offices - to decide which children are doing well in life.

This is a mistake. First, it's wrong to think every kid must aspire to the Ivy League. Certainly, that achievement gives parents bragging rights. But, what if a kid isn't studious? What if his or her gifts lead in another direction? Have we built enough alternatives into schooling to explore these?

These questions are crucial to unraveling our current anxiety over school testing. If parents are judging themselves based on where their kids go to college then we're on a track where one kind of skill - academic - is valued, and anything else is lesser.

There may be signs this attitude is changing. Since 2008, roughly 47 percent of seniors graduating from New York public schools were planning to enter four-year colleges. That compares with 53 percent earlier in the decade.

Also, the Obama administration is working to make high school vocational education more relevant to careers. In his State of the Union address back in February, the president pointed to the German system of work apprenticeships.

Another problem with judging kids by their academic performance is that it omits so many dimensions of what makes a person a good human being. As a society, we place too little emphasis on character. We elect people to office who use power for sex or money and then lie about it. We admire celebrities who demonstrate all too often that character didn't earn them their place in the spotlight. Up this week: Amanda Bynes.

I asked one of my favorite parenting writers, Laura Markham, an author and clinical psychologist who blogs at AhaParenting.com, how she would define a well-raised person. Here's her list:

Can he take responsibility when he makes a mistake? Can she do what's right even when it costs her (and doing what's right almost always costs us)?

Can he keep himself from lashing out at someone else when he gets angry?

Can she forgive herself for being imperfect? Can he apologize and repair when he inadvertently damages a relationship?

Can she pursue her passions, overcoming the inevitable hurdles and setbacks, and find the courage to get up the next morning to try again even when everything goes wrong?

Can he love deeply?

That's a difficult list to live up to, but it's a far better gauge of successful parenting than a Regents score.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

DREAMers' potential is among our best investments

In Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," everyone believes Tess' father is a poor peddler, including the man himself. Then, in a chance meeting, a parson tells him he's descended from a noble family. After that, the villagers look at Tess' father through new eyes.

Similarly, we're often mistaken in our perceptions about DREAMers - young immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children and who would be eligible for the state and federal DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Acts. We often don't recognize them for who they are. They're neighbors, classmates and children's friends.

A couple of years ago, I remarked to another mom about a boy who was becoming an academic superstar. He was one of those boys every girl had a crush on in sixth grade. My friend said, we'll see where his hard work gets him when he applies for college. The boy isn't an American citizen. He's one of roughly 1.8 million such children in local school districts across the country.

Under current law, many colleges and universities won't admit noncitizen students. And even if they enroll, most financial aid is not available to them.

In all but 13 states, these students must pay out-of-state tuition; New York is one of the 13 exceptions. But even here, DREAMers can't qualify for state academic scholarships, student loans or the need-based Tuition Assistance Program.

After realizing how many hurdles were in front of that boy, I began to look at him differently. What might his future hold? Working off the books somewhere? Turning to crime? I became a passionate supporter of the DREAM Act - federal and state.

In April, Newsday ran an op-ed by Destiny Thompson, a senior at Valley Stream South High School, whose Jamaican family moved her to the United States when she was 2. Another hard worker, she made a plea to pass the New York DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented students with good grades and low family income to get financial aid through TAP.

Readers sent many letters in response. Certainly, some had compassion for Thompson. But others worried that their chances would be spoiled by the competition. Several said they wanted the government to help Americans first.

One misconception about the New York DREAM Act is that it would take money away from citizens. Instead, anyone who meets the TAP guidelines, one of which is low income, would be eligible. The liberal Fiscal Policy Institute think tank estimates that passing the DREAM Act would cost New York just $17 million a year, or a 2 percent increase in TAP grants.

Another fear is that DREAMers would displace citizens in coveted college slots. For this reason, among others, schools with racial preferences should eliminate them. But if a minority DREAMer won a place at a university on merit, over one of my kids, that's fair. Rewarding hard work and intelligence is the moral foundation of our culture.

College graduates earn about $12,000 more a year than those without a degree - and therefore pay more in taxes. But forget the dollars for a moment. Higher education adds meaning to people's lives. It allows a person to bring art, literature, history and science to his or her endeavors. Where some see DREAMers wanting to take something away, I believe that an educated person returns gifts to the community many times over.

Let's see DREAMers for who they are: young people whose potential is among our best possible investments.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Mother's Day wishes for teen jobs, child care slots

Mother's Day comes around again this Sunday. The holiday stirs mixed emotions in people. My family has always treated me to a nice, low-key Mother's Day - a homemade card, some extra help around the house, a special meal at home.

But my mother was, sadly, never satisfied with her Mother's Day celebrations. Maybe one day a year couldn't sufficiently thank her for the hard, loving work she was doing raising seven children, or the things she went without so that we could all attend college.

So this year, on behalf of my late mom and mothers everywhere, I'm going to think bigger about our wishes for Mother's Day.

I wish for an end to the stories about pervy teachers, coaches and school administrators. This week, a Bellport High School history teacher posted bail after he was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old student. Last week, a substitute teacher at Eastport-South Manor Junior-Senior High School, who also coaches girls' volleyball and gymnastics, was also charged with having sex with an underage girl. In March, the same allegation was made against a Freeport middle school principal with an undetected felony record. The schools aren't a singles bar. Hands off.

I wish for better employment prospects for teenagers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than three in 10 American teenagers find summer jobs. This isn't just about earning money. Jobs teach young people about responsibility, cooperation, time management, handling conflict and choosing a career. Yes, parents teach these too, but at some point, teens must move into a wider world. How about a well-run, creative, summer volunteer corps for teens? They could collect trash or fix up homes - and put it on a resume.

I wish the child care subsidies for working people in Suffolk and Westchester counties, among others, would be restored. People shouldn't have to quit jobs because there's no one to watch their children. Nor should they be forced to leave their kids in dangerous situations - home alone or with a too-young sibling? - because they have to work.

I wish for a new federal policy that would make it easier for workers to take time off when their child or parent needs care. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Family Medical Leave Act, which provides for 12 unpaid weeks of leave with a guarantee that a job will be waiting afterward. That landmark law originally applied only to companies with 50 or more employees. But even for smaller companies, in just one generation, complying with the FMLA is often the norm. Still, it's not enough. Some people can't afford unpaid time. We need new thinking on how work and family responsibilities can coexist.

I wish schools would bring back late buses, so more kids could participate in sports, extra-help sessions and clubs.

Oh, and one more. I wish for "Princesses: Long Island" to be painfully accurate. The upcoming Bravo reality series, which begins June 2, has the potential to make my life as a mom a lot easier - if it's realistic about the excesses of Long Island girl life. Being driven around in limousines, discovering new must-have spa treatments, dropping hundreds of dollars weekly on clothes - if my daughters see that only "princesses" get this treatment, maybe they won't think they have to have it too.

Wishing won't make it so, of course, just as appreciating Mom one day a year isn't enough. But sometimes change begins with a wish.

This essay was first published in Newsday.

Once more in defense of the Common Core

Two weeks ago, I defended the Common Core - the new, more analytical way of approaching learning in public schools that's now being rolled out in 46 states, including New York. I think it's worth trying to raise education standards in this country, I wrote, because our students score embarrassingly low in comparison with other developed countries.

It's an understatement to say that I received a lot of mail.

There's almost nothing that riles Long Islanders like an education debate. For reader response, this issue is rivaled only by the recent furor over gun control.

Some people agreed with me; most didn't. (People respond most often when they disagree.) Some of the arguments against the Common Core and the way it has been implemented were so heartfelt that I felt I had to take another look at opposing views.

The one I find most persuasive comes from parents and teachers of kids in third and fourth grades. They feel as though the Common Core methods and tests require abstract thinking from kids who are much too young.

"The mother of one student I am tutoring called me on Sunday morning in tears trying to do a 4th-grade practice test with her daughter," one longtime teacher wrote. "The stress that this is causing families is beyond belief. Imagine an ESL or special ed student trying to do the same assignment without the benefit of private tutoring. They don't even have a chance."

Another teacher said that if parents can't understand Common Core methods, they can't help their kids with homework. That threatens to weaken one of the keys to achievement: parents supporting their children.

A third teacher said the Common Core won't even be fully rolled out into classrooms until December, and therefore we are testing students now on work they haven't yet learned.

I sympathize with these concerns. Change is disruptive, and the Obama administration and New York State education officials have done a terrible job explaining the Common Core. But I'm still hopeful that this change will benefit our country - that taking a chance to raise standards will have been worth the disruption.

Another persuasive argument is that testing is taking the creativity out of teaching, and draining the classroom of a love of learning. Carol Burris, the distinguished principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, says parents are concerned about classroom time increasingly dedicated to test preparation. Also, students who receive low scores on what she calls this "toughen up" test year, may find that parents lower their ambitions for them. They will cease to dream big. That is too sad for words.

Burris co-wrote a book, published last year, that is supportive of the Common Core. But she argues that the way it has been introduced in classrooms has been so rushed that it sets kids up to fail. And tying teachers' evaluations to test scores creates dangerous incentives.

"There are teachers who will be very concerned about who is in their classes, and that's not healthy," Burris told me.

Advocates of the Common Core say it was developed, in part, by asking business people what skills they need from graduates. Curriculum designers took those skills and worked backward from 12th grade, to build a stepladder toward mastery. This makes sense. An education should move us along a path toward self-support - from classroom to work.

The Common Core methods also involve every student in analyzing texts, not just listening to the interpretations of the teacher and the top four or five kids who raise their hands in class. That also seems smart.

Perhaps the Common Core will need to be modified, or its implementation slowed. I don't think that debate will be resolved easily. So, let's keep talking.

This essay was first published in Newsday.