Fanny Howe's "Economics"
Economics is an incredible book. Writer Fanny Howe in a mere 134 pages does what conservatives have wanted to do for decades – lay out the failures, neurosis and narcissism of the Baby Boomer generation. Howe does this with finesse and, through the medium of fiction, is able to show the real life consequences of 1960s liberalism.
Fanny Howe is not a conservative, though I am sure reflexive progressives who came across this book would label her as such. She lays out what she portrays in the book as “the necessary errors” of 1960s liberalism.
A common thread throughout Economics is bad parenting, or a general lack of parenting at all. Howe starts off by telling the story of an elite, university employed white liberal couple in Massachusetts. It’s the late civil rights era and the couple, largely driven by the wife, Carol, whose husband John is detached at best, decide to adopt a black child as an example of their stalwart anti-racism.
They decide to name the child Malcolm, a name the author notes they never would have given to a white child. Malcolm’s gender also brings out a very nasty side in Carol and eventually drives her to abandon the child and her husband as she discovers something about herself in the process of her failed parenting:
Deep down, she didn’t like boys or men. Raised by her mother alone, she was not used to the other sex. Even her husband was, at heart, a stranger, and not fully welcome, as her mother and daughter were, into the heart of her affections.
Carol exports the job of mother to her husband John and only decides to take Malcolm out when attending demonstrations or meetings on the issue of race. She finds that the presence of a black child with her helps strategically to make her look like a caring, liberal woman. She realizes that she is a hypocrite and purges herself to her therapist. In “dealing” with the problem, she ends up deciding to give up Malcolm and leave her husband.
Several things with the child Malcolm end up occurring that only solidify her decision to leave her family and run off with her daughter. Carol begins to harshly bully Malcolm, expelling her failures on an innocent bystander:
“Don’t pretend you like me,” she would snap.
“I hate your smile,” she would hiss.
“Just go away.”
Hoping that her black child would “ward off danger” at racial politics meetings, she instead became reminded of her problematic parenting. Malcolm’s skin had started to peel drastically and during a meeting, a black woman came up to her and said that his skin needed oil. The woman even recommended the brand Johnson’s, but Carol could “only get the energy to oil his limbs twice,” leaving Malcolm’s skin ashy and patchy.
While at school, a teacher reports to Carol, Malcolm’s anxiety over his place in Carol’s family showed. A teacher called Carol and said that he would spend hours in school peeling at his skin. When asked, what he was peeling, he replied that he was peeling off “the black paint.”
When she eventually goes through with abandoning Malcolm, the social worker shows little sympathy at all, saying that he will be passed around from foster home to foster home. The social worker derides her for waiting an entire three years if the arrangement had been so terrible. When asked about the social worker by her husband John, Carol dismisses her concerns by describing her as a “fascist.”
The first story has the most impact, and the rest of the book follows suit. Howe is at her best in the book when race plays a strong role – as with one short story about a young black man living in Boston’s ghetto who develops a relationship with a white woman. The desire on his part to leave the hood is so strong that he ignores what he knows – that the relationship is false and that his girlfriend doesn’t really desire him but desires what he calls “some kind of image” of a black man, one that will uplift her feeling of righteousness on racial issues.
In this book, Fanny Howe opens up a box that has been largely closed: the story of parenting by the Baby Boomer generation. Unlike their parents, Baby Boomers had far higher divorce rates and rates of out of wedlock births. The Sexual Revolution, post-feminism and Roe vs. Wade made acceptable what would have been unacceptable in previous generations. The cultural effects of a large degree of absentee parenting has been felt by popular culture but rarely spelled out explicitly. It’s popped up a bit in film, like in the Jim Carrey film The Cable Guy, in which Jim Carrey plays a crazed cable guy who was driven mad after being placed in front of the television by a busy mother. It’s almost popped up in music, such as with the rapper Eminem, who had a public dispute with his own mother, who he claimed on several occasions suffered from Munchausen’s syndrome and substituted foster homes and prescription medication for direct parenting.
The box Howe opens up is a vast one and quick answers are only so useful. One of our writers at Gonzo wrote a piece called “It’s Not Easy For The Girls,” about how oppressive expectations bombard young girls. Fanny Howe’s work Economics is a good investment for anyone genuinely interested in the role of children in post-industrial American society.
1:39 am
You guys, I struggle to find articles on this site that don’t villainize women, but even in the Econ section?!
Prove to me that this is a anti authoritarian site and not rage against the mommy site. See if you can go a whole month without posting about ‘da ebil bithches.’ I dare you.
4:43 am
How much did you look?
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/sex-slavery/
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/anarchism-womens-liberation/
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/what-is-feminism/
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/its-not-easy-for-the-girls/
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/libertarianism-race-and-gender-issues/
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/02/street-harrassment/
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/charlie-sheen-freedom-fighter-hes-doing-it-wrong/
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/takedown-of-an-anarcho-misogynist/
12:57 pm
Heisenberg – I don’t think you looked deeply enough into this article. First off – Economics is just the title of Fanny Howe’s book, not of a section of this site. I think she picked that title because finances played a loose role in all of the stories. Second – I consider this more in line with the article “It’s Not Easy For The Girls,” in which one of our Gonzo writers talked about how young girls in our culture are bombarded with an oppressive and contradictory pop culture. The article as a whole was about parenting and children, not women specifically.
1:16 pm
I find the initial comment kind of funny in light of the fact that two weeks ago people wouldn’t stop calling writers at Gonzo Times feminists. Now we hate women. I guess you can’t please everyone. We do seem to tick off everyone though.
1:18 pm
Haha.
5:12 pm
My point would be to focus on articles that don’t address anyone’s genitiles. The links you posted give a broad brush bow to feminism but then in the details the articles are sexist. Consider that Fanny’s husband also choose to name the child Malcom, permitted the child to be exposed to his partner’s emotional abuse and also finally abandoned the child and yet we revisit the tired cliche of the bad mother.
And before you tell me that you were simply re-iterating Fanny’s position, would you do the same reviewing a book by the Grand Wizard….would you just parrot what he said?
Critical thinking obligates you to evaluate the author’s position. The irony of 70′s feminism is that it was blind to it’s continued participation in inequality – the author’s glaring obliviousness to her partners equal parenting responsibility being one example.
Pro tip: If you’re quoting Eminem, you’re failing.
7:15 pm
No offense, Heisenberg, but your comments are just bizarre. There’s a bunch of nuance going on in the article that you didn’t catch, including that Fanny Howe is the author of the book, not the protagonist.
I’m sorry that Eminem (and probably Jim Carrey as well, who is also referenced) do not meet your aesthetic standards. You’ll have to give me the criteria next time in advance. =P
7:53 pm
Eminem tells me that the author is on the fast track to an Uncle Rico future. Challenge yourself a little.
Why don’t you read and review the book Shadow Elite. That seems like such an obvious choice on a site whose bi-line is “anti authoritarian.”
8:03 pm
I’ll look in to it, but I’m not sure how that’s relevant to an article about collective parenting and sociology.
I’m beginning to think that when you read “Economics,” you thought this article would be about something else.
8:20 pm
It’s more relevant to a site on social power structures than retro anthologies on bad mothering, because let’s face it – outside of my comments the father is a bit player in your analysis.
2:10 pm
Once again you demonstrate that you don’t get at all the message of this article. The father in one of the short stories is all but totally detached and a father’s total absence speaks of overall failure.
5:16 pm
We are all of us half man and half woman, and all of us have the capacity to be the tyrant and the serf. Pandering to one subgroup of the population is still a form of marginalizing – think Black History month.
My challenge stands – can you post interesting articles for one month without pointing at anyone genitals?
3:40 am
Firstly the main story you describe is just . . . odd. That someone would adopt for a political identity and then abandon it speaks to crippling mental illness and has nothing to do with gender–to be fair, I haven’t read anything other than you account of the story.
Here’s my primary issue with you analysis: “Unlike their parents, Baby Boomers had far higher divorce rates and rates of out of wedlock births. The Sexual Revolution, post-feminism and Roe vs. Wade made acceptable what would have been unacceptable in previous generations.”
I’m sure the cotton crop was hard hit by the emancipation of slaves too, and the end of Jim Crow was probably a bitch for “Colored Only” sign makers. Birth control, sexual freedom, granting women physical control of their bodies and and access to divorce certainly had an impact of child rearing. It was the beginning of a trend towards wanted children of free parents. This meant a different upbringing, for sure, and sometimes painful social adjustments, but lamenting the loss of a slave class who could be reliably counted on to raise children because they had no other choice is misguided.