Mommy Knows Better

THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION (DNC) in Chicago raised two issues, time and again, that struck me as an Indian. The first is the repeated stress on the “middle class” and the second is the glorification of “the family”, especially the role of the mother. Are the two connected or are they two discrete phenomena with no internal logic binding them? I think they are linked, and I hope to show why.

Several delegates at the DNC emphasised how Kamala Harris would be especially attentive to the aspirations of the hardworking middle class. The word “poor” was never mentioned, or, if it was, it must have been done hurriedly in passing and I may have missed it.

Contrary to the middle class emphasis in America, it claims to represent the poor grandstand political events here. In fact, there is a competition on who can be more heart wrenchingly evocative in championing those below, or hovering around, the poverty line.

Poverty is decreasing worldwide, and in India too. Yet, there are still many here who feel vulnerable enough to fear what awaits them round the corner. Poverty, therefore, is still a rich ore worth mining. A middle class in India has a smug, pot-bellied aura about it. This does not excite emotions, especially during elections.

But not so in the US. Politicians fight to claim the high moral ground where the middle class lives. There is poverty in America too, but the numbers are very small. Also, as about 80 per cent of the officially poor own cars, it is difficult to get a political rise by championing their cause. The middle class, on the other hand, is large and embraces almost all of America. This includes steel and auto workers who were once poor.

Class is obviously determined on the basis of standard of living. Steel and autoworkers today, even those who go on militant strikes, are considered to be full, chartered members of the “middle class”, and why not? These are not auto-deficit households and it is quite common for children from working class families to nurse the ambition of going to college and rising fast in this big wide world.

The assumption is that a college degree stabilises one’s middle class aspirations and sets one on a glide path to a stable, prosperous life. It then makes sense for US politicians to strum the middle class as it is for their Indian counterparts to do the same with the poor. In India, where poverty is much more dominant, it is clearing school that is an achievement; college comes later in the must-get-there list.

What about the repeated allusions to the family and to family values in American political speeches? We do not hear much of that in India. Rarely does a politician talk of the sacrifices their parents made to get them to where they are now.

Even as 40 per cent to 50 per cent of marriages in America end in divorce yet, curiously, to the Indian eye, family recurs repeatedly in political speeches in the US. This could be a nostalgic recall of a 1960s I Love Lucy version of a conjugal couple. More likely though, it is the joint contribution to the brood in blended families made up of “yours, mine and ours”.

That family values are so often recalled cannot obviously be along the lines of “till death do us part”. To claim that would be a species of moralistic denialism which Americans are not strangersIt is more likely, though, that partners in blended households contribute to the upbringing of their young, especially the aspiring young. To see through college is an expensive proposition and all hands must be on deck.

This might be why family values occupy so much space in political propaganda, though in India these moral positions go for a toss if couples were to separate. In the US, without financial family support, a college degree is tough, but eminently possible. That grateful college educated politicians and others are lavishing praise on their parents could indicate how successful economic mobility has been among America’s poor.

Climbing up the status ladder needs the backup of frugality and hard work of parents that acts like crampons on boots to help the ascent. This is how the bulk of middle class Americans made it to college. Equally noticeable is the stress on the mother figure. Whenever there is a reference to a huge sacrifice of a parent, it is nearly always the mother, the Mommy.

This is probably because a large number of families, Blacks in particular, grow up in single parent households anchored by the mother, a clear ‘Momzilla’ by all accounts. It is not unusual for a Black kid in the US to be quite unfamiliar with the father’s side of the family and not be singularly distressed about it either. Family and social mobility are staple Indian themes too but are not articulated politically as they are in America.

India and America may be coming closer but culturally we are still continents apart.

About The Author

Dipankar Gupta

Dipankar Gupta is a sociologist. He is the author of, among other titles, Q.E.D.: India Tests Social Theory and Checkpoint Sociology: A Cultural Reading of Policies and Politics