Kenneth Keniston Quotes

#1. We measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up. We have allowed quantitative standards, so central to the adult economic system, to become the principal yardstick for our definition of our children's worth.

Kenneth Keniston

#2. In brief, we have no explicit family policy but instead have a haphazard patchwork of institutions and programs designed mostly under crisis conditions, whether the crisis is national in scope (such as a recession ) or personal (such as a break-up of a particular family).

Kenneth Keniston

#3. In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return thatchildren brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change.

Kenneth Keniston

#4. Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up to their standards for their children.

Kenneth Keniston

#5. The psychological pain
and the ethical shame
of American poverty are made greater by the fact that this country possesses the wealth and the energy to raise all children to a minimally decent standard of living.

Kenneth Keniston