I also have the suspicion that your reviewer did not study my text carefully, which seems to be common for reviewers these days.
Charles Adams
Cato Institute Adjunct Scholar
Washington, DC
Dead Serious
I enjoyed Jacob Sullum's citing "Rave Rage" (August/September), but I do have one small quibble with the lede: "Despite all the pot and LSD consumed at their concerts, no one ever tried to ban the Grateful Dead."
Not true. Not only have many tried, but in the city of Syracuse, N.Y., they succeeded. After a Carrier Dome concert in 1989 that spawned more than 100 drug arrests, the city council passed a resolution permanently banning the Dead from ever playing there again. The ban was still in effect when Jerry Garcia died in 1995 and the band's touring legacy ended.
Ray Lehmann
Union, NJ
Quality Time
Should working mothers rejoice in response to Michael W. Lynch's piece "Kiddie Time" (August/September), which concludes that "children in today's fast-paced America are getting 10 more hours of parental attention each week than they used to?" Statistics don't lie, but conclusions can perhaps be a bit misleading or downright wrong.
The data shows that stay-at-home mothers spent 26.06 hours a week dedicated to parental attention between 1981 and 1997. Meanwhile, in 1997, working mothers spent 26.54 hours. Is this difference significant? All these numbers seem to show is that working mothers today spend about the same amount of time with their kids as stay-at-home moms of the past.
The claim that mothers are now getting 10 more hours with their children is absolutely wrong. According to the numbers presented, working mothers are spending about 4 hours a week more and nonworking mothers about 6 hours more than in 1981. Did Lynch perhaps add these two numbers?
It is amusing that given the same statistics, one could imagine a headline claiming, "Working moms today spend even less time with their children relative to stay-at-home moms than ever before." In 1981 the gap was about 3 hours but today it's about 5 hours -- almost a 60 percent increase!
Mark G. Kuzyk
Pullman, WA
Michael W. Lynch replies: There are many ways to cut up any data set, and I thank Mr. Kuzyk for alerting us to perhaps the most negative. I didn't add 4 and 6 to get 10. I simply added something that is often overlooked by people obsessed with professional motherhood: time fathers spend with their children. For children in two-parent families, the increase in parental attention was 10 hours per week. The figure for all children is 7 hours. The study can be found on the Web at www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/papers/rr01-475.pdf.
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