The Advice Column of Expressive Individualism
Devorah Goldman
Public Discourse

Carolyn Hax of the Washington Post recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of her syndicated advice column, which is read by millions every day. In many ways the perfect pragmatic liberal, Hax consistently communicates a worldview in which no one owes much of anything to anyone, except in the most transactional way. (The sole exception seems to be the duty of parents toward minor children).

In one archetypal example, a divorced woman—let’s call her Anne—wrote in to ask whether she should consider herself obligated to take her children to see their paternal grandmother, an elderly and infirm woman who lived near Anne’s parents. Anne’s ex-husband had become estranged from his own mother after divorcing Anne and remarrying, but Anne had felt compelled to maintain a connection between her children and their grandmother. She concluded with two questions: “How do I balance ‘I might regret neglecting a lonely ill person’ with ‘But she makes it so hard and I’m tired and she’s not even my relative’?”

The responses are revealing.