Laurel Elder and Steven Greene in their work, “Politicians love to talk about family. But maybe not yours.” try to argue that politicians need to start talking about all families and not just traditional families and need to provide support for all families. While their abundance of logical appeals and their choice of not including emotional appeals would make their argument successful for the type of article they produced, their lack of intrinsic ethos makes their credibility a little faulty and makes their overall argument unsuccessful. Elder and Greene are both Political Science professors; Elder teaches at Hartwick University in New York and Greene teaches at North Carolina University. Both worked on a book together previous to the article,
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As early as the fourth paragraph they call to attention the amount of non-traditional families that are living in the U.S., “They rarely talk about… the 30 percent of parents who are not married or the 18 percent of families with children who are in poverty” (Par. 4). They directly call out two specific groups of non-traditional families in the U.S. and there are many more ways a family could be non-traditional, such as interracial and same-sex parents. By stating those two statistics, the authors imply that a large proportion of families living in the United States are non-traditional and that politicians are not talking to most of American families. The authors then show how Democrats and Republicans use arguments and ideas to argue how they have differing views on what is good for families, yet only think and talk about traditional families, “Democrats cite families when they advocate for more regulation and stronger government programs, while Republicans hold up the family when calling for lower taxes and less government.” (par. 11). By using these ideals against them, Elder and Greene show that while politicians love talking about families, they cannot agree on what one type of family needs from their government, let alone the many differing types of families found within the United States. The authors make it known with …show more content…
They do this by quoting and stating how politicians will use their families to prove their credibility and qualifications of being candidate and president, the more of a “family man” the candidate is, the more he feels he is fit to run the county (par. 9). The authors quote Michele Obama stating, “’Barack knows what it means when a family struggles… to want something more for your kids and grandkids’” (par. 9). The authors also state how Romney used his many children and grandchildren to his advantage by constantly mentioning them, showing how proud and devoted to his family he truly is (par. 10). By showing that politicians enforce the idea of strong working men as “family men” and that only traditional fathers are fit to run the U.S. Elder and Greene show how ridiculous this sounds and logically try to show the audience that this should not be our basis on judging candidates. This idea of “family man” being the only candidates qualified to be president, moves smoothly into the authors next sub argument that the parties do enforce gender roles, and gender gaps between the two parties. The parties both enforce a stereotypical outlook on family lives. The authors use data from surveys to show that the stereotypes parenthood inflicts effect what party a
As early as the fourth paragraph they call to attention the amount of non-traditional families that are living in the U.S., “They rarely talk about… the 30 percent of parents who are not married or the 18 percent of families with children who are in poverty” (Par. 4). They directly call out two specific groups of non-traditional families in the U.S. and there are many more ways a family could be non-traditional, such as interracial and same-sex parents. By stating those two statistics, the authors imply that a large proportion of families living in the United States are non-traditional and that politicians are not talking to most of American families. The authors then show how Democrats and Republicans use arguments and ideas to argue how they have differing views on what is good for families, yet only think and talk about traditional families, “Democrats cite families when they advocate for more regulation and stronger government programs, while Republicans hold up the family when calling for lower taxes and less government.” (par. 11). By using these ideals against them, Elder and Greene show that while politicians love talking about families, they cannot agree on what one type of family needs from their government, let alone the many differing types of families found within the United States. The authors make it known with …show more content…
They do this by quoting and stating how politicians will use their families to prove their credibility and qualifications of being candidate and president, the more of a “family man” the candidate is, the more he feels he is fit to run the county (par. 9). The authors quote Michele Obama stating, “’Barack knows what it means when a family struggles… to want something more for your kids and grandkids’” (par. 9). The authors also state how Romney used his many children and grandchildren to his advantage by constantly mentioning them, showing how proud and devoted to his family he truly is (par. 10). By showing that politicians enforce the idea of strong working men as “family men” and that only traditional fathers are fit to run the U.S. Elder and Greene show how ridiculous this sounds and logically try to show the audience that this should not be our basis on judging candidates. This idea of “family man” being the only candidates qualified to be president, moves smoothly into the authors next sub argument that the parties do enforce gender roles, and gender gaps between the two parties. The parties both enforce a stereotypical outlook on family lives. The authors use data from surveys to show that the stereotypes parenthood inflicts effect what party a