508
PARTISAN REVIEW
plines." One never does find out who the carriers of this malignancy have
been.
Dudley
L.
Poston makes an astonishing statement about the work of
H.
Yuan Tien, the supreme rationalizer of Communist China's policy of
infanticide, sanitizing this murderous practice as "China 's strategic
demographic initiative." The reviewer would prefer a two-child policy
"with ample spacing between the children." At no point does the
reviewer deny the right of the state to intervene in regulating childbirth,
note the terrible penalty in the murder of female children in particular,
or question whether the issue is two children or one child - or simply
the rights of individuals to determine their own goals in light of their
own sense of domestic economies. All Mr. Poston can say is that this is
"a fine book and deserves the attention of sociologists, particularly those
interested in population planning and policy."
By the time one gets to "Life Course," the ideological bias is om–
nipresent. The book
Wall/ell without Husbands
is reviewed by Peter
J.
Stein with the following caveat about the author: " ... her interpreta–
tion sometimes lacks such precision, as when a discussion of the many
problems faced by lone parents is not balanced by citing children's posi–
tive experiences and the advantages of lone parenting over a conflict–
filled marriage. Also absent is a discussion of women's choices to become
single parents, even though such choices are of course limited by class
factors." Not one word about the overwhelming preponderance of men
to choose and initiate divorce, nor a hint of possibility that "lone par–
enting" may be equally "conflict-laden," and certainly no notion that
marriage, like life itself, may simply have to deal with conflict, as it al–
ways has.
Jill Grigsby, in reviewing two books on the elderly, throws in a
political lifeline: "In recent years, sociologists have not played a large
part in public policy." (It is nonsense. Sociologists were as numerous un–
der Reagan and Bush as they are under Clinton - just different.) This is
followed by a more frank statement: "The priorities of the Clinton ad–
ministration include topics that sociologists can and should address. Our
discipline should be adding material to the president's required reading
list." Had the same comment been made about the prior two adminis–
trations, the reviewer would surely have been greeted with a chorus of
outraged comments about working for the class, race Jnd gender enemy.
Is it any wonder that Suzanna Danuta Walters, in "The Sociology of
Culture," reviewing several books on women and television, starts with
an entirely gratuitous statement: "After Dan Quayle upped the ante of
election-year rhetoric by railing against prime time's favorite single mom ,
