Across America right now, parents face a possible nightmare: taking a sick child to the doctor, only to be told at the front desk that their health insurance is no longer valid. The reason is that millions of low-income American families have lost Medicaid benefits because they have to jump through an unexpected administrative hoop, resulting in a slow-burning crisis.
Intensive parenting—the dominant model of modern American child-rearing—is a bit like smoking: The evidence shows that it’s unhealthy, yet the addiction can be hard to kick. I’d like to suggest strategies that could help society quit overparenting, and they require parents, policy makers, and even the childless to pitch in.
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In 1971, the United States came within a pen stroke of having a functional child-care system. With bipartisan support, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act—which would have created a publicly funded, state-run program with parent payments on a sliding scale of affordability—but President Richard Nixon vetoed it. Almost exactly 50 years later, the nation once again stands on the precipice of revolutionizing its child-care system.