How Improving Our Policies for Children and Families Can Make Us the Country We Want to Be

It's Time for Curiosity and Change over Complacency.

This morning, I re-read the article Why America Hates Its Children by Lydia Kiesling. The title of the article alone forces one to confront the truth. And when one digs into the content and the proof through policy-or lack thereof-of how America hates its children, it’s both undeniable and heartbreaking.

I won’t recount all the ways the article notes that we are failing our children and, by extension, our families who care for them. Please take the time to read the article to do that. But I will highlight one point Ms. Kiesling made: when Congress had a clear choice in late 2021 to do the right thing for children and families and extend the child tax credit that had cut child poverty nearly in half, they cruelly chose to let it expire. As a result, child poverty went from a longtime low of 5% in 2021 to more than 12% in 2022. This was a clear policy choice, and Congress failed our children and families. Likewise, consider the fact that gun violence is now the leading cause of death of children in the U.S. This is also a clear policy choice and failure of Congress to enact stricter gun laws like universal background checks. It’s easy to blame this all on Congress for their failure to protect and support our children and families. And yes, they should take much of the blame. But we also need to take responsibility as a country for our children and families and say: no more. No more of this era of scarcity, apathy, and resignation. We can do better, and we must do better.

I believe that the country we want to be is one that reflects through our policies the care that we show one another in our everyday actions with our family, friends, neighbors, and communities. I believe that we don’t want to always be on guard against strangers and worry that nobody will help us when we need it. I believe that we want to get to know one another, share experiences, find common ground, and even depend on one another because at some point each of us will need help.

I experienced a microcosm of this community feeling recently on a snow day when my son was home from school. The neighborhood parents banded together to take shifts to go out in the snow with the kids so our kids could be cared for (and have fun!) and we could all get our work done that day. I joined another Mom as my son went sledding with her kids. That Mom took her kids and another kid to get lunch, while I watched my son and his friend at our house. Then, my son went to his friend’s house the rest of the afternoon where his parents watched my son. The care that day for our kids (“our” meaning the group of kids in our neighborhood) was seamless. We trusted one another, and we helped each other out. Why can’t we design policies and a social safety net that recreates this seamless nature to care for children and families? The answer is that there is no reason we can’t-we have just chosen not to. And think about the havoc that unexpected snow days or any school closures wreak on parents who can’t work from home and can’t afford to send their kids to a daycare center or get a babysitter that day. We have no safety net for these parents and kids. These kids don’t get to enjoy a snow day, and their parents are overwhelmed and exhausted by a society that talks about its value for children but whose policies do the opposite.

Absent this stronger social safety net-including through expanded childcare and preschool, fully funded public schools, expanded after-school and summer enrichment, and expanded healthcare and child tax credits-we will continue to live in a society of scarcity, isolationism, and Hunger Games-style competition among families. Jennifer Breheny Wallace captures so well in her book Never Enough the impact this scarcity combined with a toxic achievement culture has on our kids: that instead of being valued for who they are, they feel like they are reduced to walking resumes, pressured to be the best in everything to perpetuate the American myth of individual achievement. Enough.

There is a better way.

It is found in the community we see in neighborhood barbecues, in families helping each other out, and in policies that show respect, dignity, and care for children and families. It is found in interdependence, not isolationism and competition; in curiosity, not fear. Yes, we must pressure Congress to do better: to make permanent the expanded child tax credit, better fund our public schools and childcare centers, and countless more things. And we can’t wait for Congress to act: we must also work at the state level with our Governors and state legislators to pass these policies, like the states that have created or expanded their own child tax credits or like New Mexico that in 2022 became the first state to make child care free for nearly all families. And we can take actions at the local level to advance supportive policies and funding for children and families as well. No one level of government is fully responsible for our children and families, and no level is similarly off the hook. It will take efforts at all levels of government to begin showing care, compassion, and love for our children and families.

In her article, Ms. Kiesling describes a town square in Greece that her family was visiting where children were playing freely while adults were looking out for their and other people’s children in a communal way. I’m sure we can find this scene in many places across our country, where neighbors are looking out for one another and their children. But in our country, due to our policy failures, there is always the fear of some danger-a clear, imminent threat like someone with a gun or the conditioned fear of metaphorically falling through our frayed social safety net with the next electricity bill or mishap. We don’t have to live this way. True freedom, that our country espouses, will be found not just in the absence of this fear, but in the knowing that each of us-especially our children-is valued, and will be cared for as such, including through our policies. Let’s get to work.