The next election can’t come soon enough.
The destructive footprint of this administration and the new extremist Democratic Party wherever it holds sway are destroying the quality of life of too many Americans.
Democrats are seemingly running America’s great cities into the ground — D.C., New York, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago — with unrecognizable levels of crime, anti-social behavior, gun violence, car jackings, drug addiction and homelessness.
The flight of citizens and businesses from these centers is well documented as these laboratories of far-left approaches incubate a contagion of self-destruction.
It's in this cocktail of government overreach, indifference and incompetence, that we see the executive and its allies across the U.S. public sector machinery asserting authority over parents in the raising of children.
The White House has been repeating the mantra that America’s children are "our children" — that is, everyone’s responsibility except the parents.
It's the basis upon which a teacher can collude with faculty to change a child’s gender without informing parents.
It's the basis upon which the White House can assume that their highly politicized, polarizing, and extremist views on identity gives them the authority to be more "loving" than a parent whose views may be based in biology, science, or ancient faiths.
This is the consequence of an alarming growth of federal government power over recent years. As big government grows, so the role of individual states and civil society shrinks.
As a consequence we have historically low levels of trust in our government, our media, our big institutions, and each other.
Federal government growth has coincided with the demise of social capital.
Government does not raise our children.
Parents do.
What American families need is for the government to get out of the way.
The time is now.
A report out this week from the Social Capital Campaign has highlighted the urgent need for more parenting care not less.
This administration wants to roll out more daycare centers to raise children, but research shows that non-maternal care for 30 hours plus a week is associated with "problem behaviors" and lack of social skills that persists through childhood, adolescence and into young adulthood — similar to the effect size of poverty on behavioral outcomes.
As we look at the state of America’s youth, the landscape is concerning.
Half of adolescents in America have had a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. The percentage of high school students who have used illicit or injection drugs like heroin stands at 15%
Anxiety and depression increased by 63% among 18-30 year-olds between 2005 and 2017.
The number of homicides committed by children under 14 in 2020 was the highest in twenty years, while one in three teenagers in the U.S. is a victim of teen dating violence.
It is time to let moms be able to do their job. The investment of care for 0-3s is a priority.
It is here that, according to attachment theory, foundational patterns of relationships are set for life.
Secure-attachment is associated with better grades, better mental health outcomes, lower-risk behaviors around alcohol, drugs, and sex.
For now, America is one of the more hostile countries for allowing bonding to take place between mother and child.
We have some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, despite having the second most expensive cost of child birth globally.
We have the least generous national government support of young families so that one in four mothers return to work in America two weeks after giving birth.
Most mothers want to be able to stay at home to look after their children in the early years but our economy and culture are really resistant to this, especially for those on low-income, who all too often have to sacrifice investment in their own families in order to get food on the table.
America is an outlier in its lack of support for the early years.
Rather than government take more control over parenting, it is time for lawmakers to back parents, and moms especially, who want to invest in their 0-3s by staying at home for those early years.
The opportunity for mothers to bond with their children should be available to all.
It's the most fundamental, yet most neglected, building block of social capital in America today. As we anticipate the departure of the current administration, let us hope for a candidate willing to do the hard work to help parents take back control.
Rick Santorum is a former U.S. senator, who represented Pennsylvania's 18th District, from 1995 to 2007. He is also an author, attorney, and political commentator.
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