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September 9, 2024

The Nanny State Is Not the Answer to Parents’ Challenges

The chaos of summer is over. Kids have gone back to school. But fall brings a whole new set of challenges. We parents have spent the past few weeks creating complex matrices — schedules for child care, after-school activities, and car pools. But by next week, someone will get sick, or a babysitter will quit, and…

August 27, 2024

Poverty Isn’t Neglect, and Money Isn’t Always the Answer

“I think about the families separated in Missouri over the years, not because of abuse or neglect, but because they could not afford to pay a bill or new clothes for their kids.”  That was House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) last month, announcing the Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act.  This idea that children are removed…

July 14, 2024

Fostering Normalcy for Foster Kids

When my daughter was 16 and was offered a job as a lifeguard, her boss told her she’d need to have her own bank account in order to be paid. No one gets checks anymore, just direct deposit. So I took her to our local bank branch and helped her open an account. This process…

June 26, 2024

Reducing Racial Disparities in Foster Care Might Endanger Black Children

To what lengths should we go to reduce racial disparities in the child welfare system? In 2021 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to require the Department of Children and Family Services to pilot a program of “blind removals.” The program, which had been tried to great fanfare in a couple of other jurisdictions, essentially…

June 23, 2024

Is Systemic Racism Responsible for the Increase in Child Mortality Rates?

How is it that in the richest country on Earth, life expectancy has been falling? This is the question that many policymakers and consumers of news have been asking themselves of late. Between COVID-19, drugs and the consequences of obesity (including high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems), we are digging ourselves an early grave. Still,…

May 31, 2024

ACS Has Lost the Plot

It’s been almost a year, but Lynija Eason Kumar was finally charged with murder last month in the death of her six-year-old daughter, Jalayah Eason. The child, according to New York City’s medical examiner, died as a result of blunt-force injuries, malnourishment, and positional asphyxia. According to the New York Times, she “died after Ms. Eason…

May 13, 2024

The Biden Administration Crossed a Line in Its Rule on Gender Health Care and Foster Children

What is the best way to support a child diagnosed with gender dysphoria, that is, a child who believes their body doesn’t match the person they really are? A couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration put through changes to Title IX rules, forbidding discrimination based on gender identity, which would mean, among other things,…

April 23, 2024

Neglected Representation in Foster Care

How do people working in the child-welfare system determine what is in a child’s best interests? Meeting the child in question might seem a good first step. A new report from the California legal advocacy group AdvoKids, however, found that the lawyers representing foster children in court often fail to perform this basic task. In…

April 11, 2024

The US Is Failing Infants Exposed to Drugs and Alcohol

Joseph Adonis of New York, age 14 months, died from acute heroin, cocaine and fentanyl poisoning. A medically fragile toddler in Arizona died after being left unattended his crib by parents with a long history of substance abuse. A Missouri four-year old died from malnutrition and chronic abuse by a caregiver prone to “unpredictable behavior” due to drug abuse. These…

April 9, 2024

Child Abandonment in the Name of Compassion

A self-described libertarian friend once described to me the feeling she had when it was time to leave the hospital with her newborn baby. She remembered looking at the nurse and thinking, “You’re just going to let me take this thing home? I have no idea what I’m doing.” Even those of us who are…