Political Correctness continues on many of the nation’s campuses. Many Americans still regard the whole affair as a petty squabble among eggheads, unrelated to their daily lives. However, a recent skirmish in the PC wars illustrates only too well why all Americans, especially parents, have a stake in this scholastic conflict. 

Professors Jay Belsky and David Eggebeen of Penn State University recently published an article documenting a statistical link between problem behavior in six-year-old children and the full-time employment of their mothers when they were three. Although written in the dry, sociological prose typical of the journal in which it appeared (the Journal of Marriage and the Family) and although replete with the standard statistical formulae, this article provoked a small storm in academe. No fewer than four professors have published hostile critiques, attacking Belsky and Eggebeen for allegedly using inadequate and even fraudulent techniques and for indulging in unwarranted interpretations. These published criticisms constitute only the tip of the iceberg of academic frigidity Belsky and Eggebeen have encountered since publishing their study. 

Why the hostile response? On procedural and technical issues, Belsky and Eggebeen answered their critics point by point. Further, they argued, that if they had used the same techniques but reached different conclusions, no one would have faulted their work. It appears, as Belsky and Eggebeen put it, that “some findings . . . are simply more ‘politically correct’ than others.” The consequence is that “the playing field is by no means even” for researchers on maternal employment and child care. If psychologists or sociologists uncover evidence suggesting that maternal employment may pose risks for children, they will find it harder to publish or win a hearing for their work than will colleagues whose work shows maternal employment linked to neutral or positive outcomes for their children. 

Readers may even wonder if Belsky and Eggebeen could have published their own politically incorrect study if Professor Belsky had not established a national reputation before beginning his investigations into the risks of maternal employment. Lacking such a reputation, a Ph.D. candidate at a major Midwestern university was recently denied her degree in sociology until after she had removed an offending chapter in her dissertation in which she identified potentially adverse consequences of maternal employment for adolescents. 

But unlike, say, the verse structure of ancient Greek drama, maternal employment is no merely academic con cern. For millions of American house holds, maternal employment defines everyday reality. If that reality poses risks for children, why arc university professors trying to silence those who would tell us about those risks? The possibility that some children suffer when their mothers go to work may be too distress ing for some professors to consider, if they themselves advocate such employment-or are themselves employed mothers. (Is it merely coincidence that three of the four public critics of Belsky and Eggebeen are women?) Could it be that some professors serve self-interest by promoting social trends that put more women and children into settings requiring university-trained specialists? Daycare centers and the state systems that regulate them do hire people with university degrees. 

Whatever their motives, America’s professoriat are trying to suppress re search of potentially life-shaping importance for millions of mothers and their children. Perhaps because so many editors and reporters are themselves in two career families, few journalists have shown much interest in investigating the validity of academic assurances about maternal employment. Belsky and Eggebeen have not had to interrupt their research to grant interviews to the press. But if the well-being of the nation’s children is at stake, surely it is past time for a searching and honest inquiry into the effects of maternal employment. Professors who try to foreclose that inquiry may successfully protect their own political correctness; they will not well serve the nation’s parents and children.