Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

All this work led me to believe strongly in paid parental leave for working parents of newborns and adoptive babies—a policy offered by all the world’s major industrial nations except the United States. Now that most American children live in homes in which all adults work, the idea of paid parental leave seemed to me highly welcome, humane, overdue. But this ideal has come slam up against a new truth—many on the right oppose the very idea of government help for working families. In fact, apart from the military, they don’t want much government at all. Other ideals—strengthening environmental protection, averting global warming, ending homelessness—face the same firmly closed door. If we want government help in achieving any of these goals, I realized, we need to understand those who see government more as problem than solution. And so it was that I began my journey to the heart of the American right.