June 20, 2025
What Kids Need—and Adults Need to Know—to Combat the Youth Mental Health Crisis
Starting this fall students in New York will join those in other states like California in not being able to access cellphones during the day. These bans are the culmination of years of education and activism by parents, teachers and researchers concerned about the effect of technology not only on academic performance but also on…
June 16, 2025
Better Boys: The Difference Good Dads Make
The girls cleaned up at my (Brad’s) daughter’s middle school graduation in Virginia this month. Three out of four of the school’s top awards went to girls. A majority of the “President’s Academic Excellence Awards,” an award given to students who maintained an “A” average each semester throughout their middle school career, went to girls. This is par for the course….
April 3, 2025
The dangerous myth that poverty is the cause of child abuse
Why does child abuse happen? A new public service announcement says most people think it’s a “bad parent problem,” but the ad suggests “the root causes may be different than you think.” This message from Prevent Child Abuse America goes on to explain that child abuse is the result of families’ lack of financial resources — a…
April 1, 2025
Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani’s Dangerous Radicalism on Child Welfare
Socialist state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has made a splash in the race for New York City mayor. A relentless social media campaign has helped him raise big dollars, despite his long-shot odds against incumbent mayor Eric Adams and former governor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani has also adopted a platform of terrible ideas. His campaign materials portray him as a Robin…
April 1, 2025
Did Maltreatment Fatalities in Texas Really Decline?
A drop in the number of children entering foster care and fatalities due to abuse in Texas is, on its face, welcome news, and some stakeholders in the well-being of children are heartened. “There have been more net positives than any negatives that show up,” Brandon Logan, executive director of the Texas nonprofit One Accord…
January 6, 2025
This Child Welfare Rule Puts Social Justice Over Safety
“The hope and intention is that we’re creating some equity around how we’re supporting family members caring for children that are in foster care.” That’s how Rebecca Jones Gaston, commissioner for the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF), described one of her agency’s new rules to Time in 2023. The rule lets states create alternative licensing processes…
December 14, 2024
Why the Riskiest Situation NYC Foster Kids Can Face Is Visiting Their Birth Parents
Between 2020 and 2023, there were 2,154 cases of substantiated abuse and/or neglect of foster children in New York City. When New Yorkers read that statistic — taken from a recent City Comptroller’s audit of the Administration for Children’s Services — they might be shocked. Indeed, it might confirm their prior assumptions about how terrible foster care…
October 14, 2024
Another Terrible Idea: Abolishing Child Welfare
The only thing surprising about Dorothy Roberts winning a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” earlier this month is that it took the organization so long to do it. Roberts, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has long been a darling of the critical-theory Left for her writings advocating the abolition of the child welfare…
September 27, 2024
Justice at Any Cost?
“Almost 9,000 children in California foster care could soon be taken from homes over insurance crisis,” reads one among a dozen similar headlines that have appeared in West Coast media over recent weeks. The stories all suggest a situation that snuck up on the child-welfare establishment and political leaders. Yet this problem has simmered for…
September 21, 2024
Why Is Race Still a Factor in Adoption?
“I know you really want to be parents, and I can tell that you would love and dote on the child,” Angela Tucker, a consultant for an adoption agency, told Todd and Tammy. “But adopting a Black child requires more than love. I will not be recommending that you proceed with adopting a Black child.”…