Excerpts
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It’s been a common refrain that if the Trump administration and congressional leadership truly wanted to make it easier for families in America to grow and thrive, they would turn to policies like national paid leave, affordable child care, maternal health care and home and community-based services for our aging and disabled loved ones. They would be investing in early education and the caregiving workforce. They would be supporting commonsense accommodations like remote work. They would be growing social safety nets.
But they’ve done none of that. Their response to child care is to send in grandma. They’ve said next to nothing about paid leave.
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The desire to succeed in life, to be able to afford one, to be able to support your loved ones, is universal. It’s not a liberal fantasy, it’s an idea of strength and dignity.
Making more babies by threat, faux incentives or even force is not a goal or a solution. But the idea of supporting families and allowing all of us to live healthier and richer lives is one we should be restoring front and center, and a conversation we should be having.
This is the project facing all of us who actually care about the survival of civilization.