Book Review: Eight is Enough

[osprey_archer]

Tom Braden’s Eight Is Enough is a big-happy-family memoir in the tradition of Cheaper by the Dozen, and although alas nothing can be quite as delightful as Cheaper by the Dozen (my mother read it to me when I was eight so I am of course biased; but still, the Gilbreths had a frickin’ lighthouse, the Braden’s oceanside regular house just can’t compete), Eight Is Enough is nonetheless gently charming in much the same vein.

It is, as the title suggests, about Tom Braden’s eight children, and also an interesting glimpse of the liberal view of society in the 1970s. (The Bradens were family friends of the Kennedys, and the book mentions a number of other names I suspect I would recognize if I knew the seventies better.) Braden has made a fragile peace with marijuana but retains a horror of harder drugs, particularly misused prescription medications; he is uneasy about the way that the Pill has separated sex and marriage, but nonetheless tries not to be an interfering old fuddy-duddy with his children.

And he’s already, in the early 1970s, complaining that college costs have skyrocketed beyond the point where hard-working youths can foot their own college bills through part-time work. It’s rather sad to realize that this problem has been recognized for over forty years and has only gotten worse.

I think we damned ourselves to ever-rising college costs for ever-decreasing returns the moment we made it a social priority to send as many kids as possible to college. We’ve built a house of cards on the belief that the correlation between college degrees and middle-class financial stability is innate when in fact it came about because college degrees were comparatively rare.

Comments

[staranise]

Your last sentence--siiiigh. Yes.

[osprey_archer]

Of course, now that we're in this fix it's hard to get out of it. It's so undemocratic to argue against widespread college.

[asakiyume]

You are so very right in your last paragraph.

Everybody should have the right to take classes to broaden their minds if they want--human culture is the heritage of all of us. But it's nuts to make an extra four years of schooling a prerequisite for living-wage jobs. Also, training for high-skill jobs like doctoring and engineering should be separate from the cultural enrichment stuff.

In the late 70s or early 80s there was a TV show that I guess was based on this book (same title). How did you end up coming across this as a thing to read?

[osprey_archer]

I got the book from Netgalley; someone must be reprinting it. And, well, I'm a sucker for Cheaper by the Dozen type stories.

It occurs to me that we've been in a sort of educational arms race for the last century: it used to be that a high school education was enough to set a job-seeker apart, but as that became common (from the best of democratic motives), college became the new dividing line. I suspect that if Bernie Sanders' free college plans came to fruition, college would then be nothing but the new high school, and people looking to stand out would get graduate degrees. It's already starting to happen.

[asakiyume]

And yet we've got a limited life span--it's CRAZY to spend our best, most energetic years in pointless training. People want to get out and DO stuff.

grah grah grah grah <--noise of frustration.

[minutia_r]

The thing about Cheaper by the Dozen is when you read it as a kid it's so nice and charming, but when you read it as an adult you are struck by the double fridge horror of a) there are never actually a dozen kids! One of them dies and is never mentioned again before the last one is actually born! and b) if you want to talk about the awfulness of modernity, the Gilbreths were actually personally responsible for a not-insignificant part of it.

[duskpeterson]

Heh, yes. Though the mother (whose accomplishments are distinctly underplayed in "Cheaper by the Dozen" and its sequel, "Belles on Their Toes") was quite a pioneer. I read a biography of her last year: "Lillian Gilbreth," by Julie Des Jardins.

[osprey_archer]

Shhhhhh. Don't spoil my fond memories!

I did notice dead kid, though, who is pretty much only mentioned in a footnote that says she died of diphtheria. (Mary, I think her name was. Why do I remember these things?) That bothered me as a child.

[evelyn_b]

It was Mary! I remember counting the names of all the kids and realizing that Mary only ever appeared in the train trip story, before she died and before all the kids were born.

And oh, man, yes, the Taylorism-as-light-comedy was so jarring to me as a kid. Plus I hated that scene where they tease the woman from Planned Parenthood, long before I knew anything about Planned Parenthood. She was obviously talking about women who would like to have fewer children but don't have the means, but the Gilbreths parade around in front of her being rich and comfortable and think they've scored a point.

I think the disturbing aspects of Cheaper by the Dozen stuck with me more than its coziness.