Dan Quayle Was Right

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Dan Quayle Was Right

Journal article

By: Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Date: April, 1993

Source: Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe. "Dan Quayle was Right." The Atlantic. 4 (1993): 47.

About the Author: Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is an American social scientist and author who specializes in the research and analysis of family issues, including the impact of separation and divorce upon family structures. She has written a number of books, including The Divorce Culture.

INTRODUCTION

During the 1991–1992 American television season, the popular situation comedy Murphy Brown featured on ongoing story line that explored a number of issues regarding the pregnancy of the program's lead character, the successful and unmarried career woman Murphy Brown, as portrayed by actress Candice Bergen. The final episode of the season culminated in Brown giving birth to her child.

In 1992, American Vice-President Dan Quayle touched off a firestorm of media commentary when he stated that the Murphy Brown character set a poor example for the people of America. Quayle remarked that while he had not personally watched the program, the decision of Murphy Brown to deliberately choose to have a child out of wedlock was an indication of how the liberal forces of the entertainment industry in general and those of television in particular had eroded traditional American family values. Quayle particularly criticized the characterization given to Murphy Brown's decision to become a single mother as one representing a lifestyle choice.

The public comments regarding the observations of Quayle were representative of the different fissures in American public opinion at the time concerning the concept of single motherhood. Quayle was roundly attacked by both the entertainment industry and various women's groups. The entertainment industry to a large degree responded by stating that programs such as Murphy Brown simply reflected the reality of modern American society, and that Murphy Brown was a mirror and not a political statement, nor did the production particularly advocate one approach to parenting and family structure over another. Women's groups saw the Quayle statements about a television character as indicative of the true attitudes held by the Republican Reagan administration and conservatives generally regarding the position of women in the workplace. These commentators observed that the fictional Murphy Brown clearly embraced motherhood as an important concept, a fact of importance to society as a whole.

Quayle attracted considerable support for his views from religious conservative groups across America. The expression 'family values' was commonly employed by conservatives to encompass a wide range of principles as being the most desirable and American basis for the family; the traditional two parent family structure was at the heart of this definition.

The four part essay Dan Quayle was Right, of which the excerpted primary source below is the fourth part, was published in April 1993, approximately one year after the furor concerning Murphy Brown had first arisen. The contest between the portrayal of unwed motherhood on Murphy Brown and the conservative views of Vice President Quayle continued into the next television season, as the producers of the program wove the Quayle comments and their controversy into the storyline of the program.

PRIMARY SOURCE

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

SIGNIFICANCE

The right of women to make their own choices concerning education, career, family, and motherhood has been a central aspect of the broad range of the issues that have stimulated international debates on women's issues since the work of American reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the nineteenth century.

The 1993 conclusions of Barbara Dafoe White-head were advanced against an ongoing debate in American society about the viability of all types of family structures. It is apparent from a careful reading of Whitehead's conclusions concerning the traditional two parent family that hers is not an ideologically based case, but rather an analysis that is as empirical as social science research and its inherent variability can ever be.

An important aspect of Whitehead's analysis is the absence of any consideration of the element of 'lifestyle choice' of single motherhood and resultant family structure that sparked the controversy surrounding the comments of Vice President Dan Quayle. The Whitehead analysis does not attach a value to the concept of whether a woman may derive any personal fulfillment in her execution of a family choice. Whitehead sees the advantages of the traditional two parent family structure from the perspective of the best possible outcomes for its family members. Economic benefits, the usual lines of authority between parents and children, and inherent stability for children in being a part of a fixed family grouping are all factors that are unrelated to any consideration of personal fulfillment through the exercise of a personal choice, in the manner of the fictional Murphy Brown.

It is significant that while marriage and cohabitation are the result of a choice, as often is single motherhood, Whitehead perceives there to be significantly better stability and positive outcomes in families where a father has died to create a family led by a single parent than ones formed through choice.

Whitehead also develops the notion that simply having a second parental figure present, whether through casual domestic partnerships, or by longer term cohabitation, does not generate the same level of stability to the family unit as does the traditional two biological parent model. Numerical data provided through the 2000 American census suggests that children age twelve to seventeen who resided in a blended family unit were significantly more likely to experience emotional difficulties, a lower level of engagement with their schoolwork, and criminal law involvement than those children who were resident in a family with two biological parents.

An ironic aspect of the furor generated by the remarks of Dan Quayle is that his target, the concept that having a child beyond the traditional two parent structure is an erosion of family values, is perhaps not the most compelling social issue raised by the fictional Murphy Brown. In deciding to have her child as a single mother, Brown, an archetypal successful career woman, clearly exercised her choice to not terminate her pregnancy and have an abortion. Abortion is among the most profound battleground issues in America over the past forty years. The 1973 United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, where the Court legalized the concept of abortion on demand, is one of the most influential and controversial decisions in American legal history.

The decision of Murphy Brown to have her child is the type of decision that would otherwise be applauded by conservative women's groups of the type that supported Dan Quayle's views about single motherhood. In this respect, Quayle criticized one choice made by Murphy Brown that implicitly involved a moral decision that he and his constituency would otherwise support.