The U.S. Leaves Parents On Their Own for a Reason
On so many measures of family hardship, young children and their parents in the U.S. suffer more than their counterparts in other high-income nations. Babies are more likely to die and children are more likely to grow up in poverty. The U.S. is the only rich country in the world without national paid family leave. And while other wealthy countries spend an average of $14,000 each year per child on early-childhood care, the U.S. spends a miserly $500. Underlying each of these bleak truths appears to be the same, misguided belief: that government support for parents is at odds with parents being responsible for their kids.
Once you start looking for it, this idea is everywhere. It has been used to argue that open strollers should not be accommodated in March); to justify the lifting of mask mandates before a vaccine for the youngest children was (parents should protect small children, said ); to explain why the government should not make child care affordable (“I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children,” ).
