5 Ways to Make America More Family Friendly

Welcome to Family Policy Matters, an engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, this is John Rustin, president of NC Family, and we're grateful to have you with us for this week's program. It's our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged, and inspired by what you hear on Family Policy Matters, and that you will feel better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now, here is our host of Family Policy Matters, Tracey Devette Griggs. Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. As you've likely heard, our vision statement here at NC Family reads, a state and nation where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished. Well, our job here is to help lawmakers and citizens create policies that help that vision become more of a reality. Well, speaking of helping families thrive, our guest today is here to discuss what can be done to improve the lives of American families and why the United States needs a uniquely American approach to family policy. Patrick T. Brown, a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, welcome back to Family Policy Matters. Thanks so much.

It's great to be back. All right, so you have studied family public policy in different countries around the world. What are some of the best international examples of pro-life policy, do you think? A lot of countries in the last decade or more have started to realize that the problems facing families are starting to have an impact on their birth rate. And so a lot of countries are sort of explicitly pursuing pro-natalist goals, right, trying to increase their birth rate. And this can take a variety of different features from giving families cash for having babies or trying to have a welfare state approach to providing all these sort of government programs like universal childcare and that sort of thing. And so when you look at family policy around the globe, you're really struck by the fact that there is no shortage of examples out there that we might want to learn from when thinking about supporting families here in the U.S. But looking either at what places like Scandinavia are doing with their very robust welfare state approach to some countries in Eastern Europe that some people on the right here in the U.S. have been trying to do. You know, there's different ways that we can go about supporting families and helping them thrive. And so I think, as you alluded to, the approaches that are going to work best here in the U.S. are the ones that are most in keeping with the U.S.'s understanding of what the government should be doing. And so that's what I think we want to be talking about and thinking about. So is that what you mean when you say that America needs a distinctly American family policy?

Yeah. So a lot of folks on the right, a lot of my friends who are more conservative have started to look at places like Hungary that have really been emphasizing the sort of patriotic duty of people to increase the birth rate, to advance the nation of Hungary. And that might work nicely for Hungary. But that's something that I don't think really resonates with people in America. People aren't having babies because they're not feeling patriotic.

There's actual social and economic pressures that are pushing against people's natural tendency to want to have a family. And so ways that we can try to understand working within our American system, we have 50 states for a reason. Our system was set up as one that tries to develop power down to the local level. And so a national policy that tries to do a one size fits all approach, the same in Raleigh as in Bakersfield, California, is going to have a harder time finding traction. And so working with that and realizing that federalism and local policy can be just as effective an approach as trying to help increase, you know, make it easier for families is going to be important for conservatives who want to make our public policies more family friendly.

Talk a little bit about what you consider the biggest weaknesses of American family policy or perhaps the greatest threats that are facing American families. One is this sort of natural tendency to assume that the government, its best role is to just get out of the way and people will naturally do what comes, you know, naturally. And I think we're seeing that Americans face much lower taxes than a lot of other countries and certainly in the historical sweep of things were not excessively taxed, although some people may feel that way. Certainly there's no fun paying taxes, but that doesn't seem to be the biggest damper on people's fertility and household information choices. I think there's a much more cultural aspect to this where people who get married at age 25 today, that wouldn't have been anything to remark on in previous generations.

But now that seems is getting very obscenely early in some circles. And I think there's the opportunity cost of having a child, not just the expenses of diapers and that sort of thing, but taking time out of the workforce or taking time out of your education. You know, a lot of times people sort of prime years for having a child coincide with being in school or starting that job. And so they're faced with these conflicting responsibilities or these conflicting desires. And so finding ways to realize that sometimes those are things that the government can step in and we don't necessarily need to just have a hands off approach to say, well, whatever is best for the economy is best for families.

That's not always true. If a company is setting a worker's schedule the day before or two days in advance and making it harder for parents to juggle their responsibilities in the workplace and at home, that's something that there might be a role for policy to step in and intervene. And so I don't think that needs to be a full Scandinavian style work or state, but I think there are approaches to public policy that say what is best for parents and what is going to make parents' lives easier, both for current parents and people who might be thinking of having a child. And I think those will have just as much an impact as some of the more extreme versions of pro-family policy that we've seen in other countries. So you also mentioned, and you talked about this or alluded to this a little bit earlier, that the changes that we make to family-oriented policy should match our national characters. So what do you consider our national character to be?

That's a great question. I think one thing that I have in mind with that is this ongoing debate that we're having about the expanded child tax credit, which was instituted, as a lot of folks may know, as part of the COVID relief package that was passed in the early months of the Biden administration that provided no strings attached cash to all parents. And I happen to think that was probably the right thing, but it's proven politically unpopular. And one of the reasons why is I think Americans have this innate desire for self-sufficiency and this strong conviction that work really matters. And we want to be incentivizing people to work as being part of a social contract and that just handing out benefits to all parents, even though I think lots of us would agree that parents who are staying home with their kid are working just as hard as the people who are working in the labor force, that there's a sort of cultural recognition that work is something that is valuable and should be rewarded. And so a no strings attached approach to cash benefits is not something that Americans seem that interested in. And so I think that's an example of a way that designing public policies to support families need to recognize, okay, well, there should be a connection, probably should be a connection to the workforce in some way. And recognizing that Americans, as we've seen, certainly in the last couple of years with the pandemic, we're a much less collectivist nation than a lot of other places.

And that's a double edged sword. But we are independent. We are sort of small L libertarian. We don't want the government telling us what to do. So there needs to be a recognition that America is a nation with a lot of strengths, a lot of unique characteristics and working with those rather than trying to reshape America to fit some ideal of what we think it should look like. You wrote an article for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, five ways to make America more family friendly. And this article kind of stuck out to me because it's very practical, you know, we might see that there are some issues or like how on earth do we tackle those? Could you just take us through what you think those five ways are that we can put our hands to and try to make some changes on?

Definitely, obviously, there's way more than five we could we could think about. And I think the first, certainly on the national level is making the tax code more family friendly. So things like, you know, maybe a first time homebuyers credit, expanding those kind of opportunities, especially in a post row society, hopefully, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Mississippi law, there's gonna be a lot of parents who are facing planned pregnancies who are now going to be maybe faced with financial burdens, and we should be supporting them both materially but also through the tax code and other public policies. It related to that, secondly, is marriage penalties in the tax code and in some of our social safety net programs, which actually penalize cohabitating couples if they get married, and we know that marriage is a much more stable union, not just for the parents, but also for any children involved. And so if we want to use the power of the state to encourage strong families and help those kids achieve better futures, we should invest in eliminating those penalties that come from, you know, if you get married and you lose some of your benefits or if your tax rate goes up, that has a real not a major impact, but on the margins, it certainly has a real impact on the lives of low income or working class people.

So that would be another thing. Third, I think this is something that you guys are very familiar with in North Carolina, but expanding the choices available to parents, all parents across the income spectrum should have their choice of where they want to send their child to school. That shouldn't be limited by zip code or income and really should be part of a robust pro-family agenda, recognizing that every family should be able to make the choice that's right for them.

Fourth, cost of living. And this is a really broad bucket, but things like housing and health care, some of the other things that really impact families' wallets, increasing competition in the health care industry and relaxing some of the onerous regulations around building new housing. I think these are things that are, especially at the state level, are things that policymakers should be really attuned to. And then lastly, I think this is something that a lot of folks on the right have been focused on over the past decades, but can never be understated enough that there are always cultural threats to families as well, whether that's things like, you know, unfettered access to pornography or some of the gender ideology stuff that's happening in public school classrooms, shining a light on those, finding creative ways to give parents more tools to raise children the way they want to. And in the values that they hold dear, I think that's something that can't be lost. While they're focusing on the sort of economic factors, which are extremely important in supporting families, there's also that cultural aspect too. So it's a long-winded answer, but those are kind of my five areas that I try to focus on when I'm thinking about making America more family friendly. All right. Excellent.

That's a great synopsis. Let's talk a little bit before we go about some groups that may be trying to use family policy to form or change America. Do you see the Build Back Better agenda with President Biden and his administration as an example of that? Yeah, the fundamental flaw of the Build Back Better approach, and this is not just Build Back Better, but a lot of the ideology that forms these big sweeping legislated vehicles is this idea that there's really nothing special about families.

There happen to be a collection of individuals that share the same roof for a while, but the best thing that the government can do is relieving parents of their obligations as caregivers and helping them get back into the labor force as soon as possible through things like universal childcare. The marriage penalties that I talked about earlier are often just sort of ignored because marriage isn't treated as something that's important in a lot of elite circles. It's just seen as an ancillary thing that, oh, if people want to get married, they can, but there's really no reason for the government to be involved.

But again, the social science tells us that that's bad for the partners and it's bad for the children. And so an approach to policymaking that places the individual first and foremost, and what's most important is sort of maximizing their utility. That's just a really hollow way of looking at public policy. And when you have these programs like universal childcare or other things that sort of try to have the state play the role that the parents can, certainly, as a lot of people are familiar with, the quote that sort of lost the Virginia governor's election a couple months ago, this idea that parents shouldn't have any say in what public schools are teaching their children, that just is completely backwards. And I think to your point is a way of sort of remaking society to be more much more individualistic and less concerned about what strengthens families in the communities that they're part of. Instead, we should be having a policy agenda that really prizes families and pluralism in the broadest sense of the word, having families be part of faith communities, neighborhoods, cities that they can feel ownership in and take pride in.

That should be what our agenda is about, strengthening those intermediary institutions, rather than just saying how can we free individuals up as much as possible by using the power of the state to do so. Well, if people want to read what you've been writing about this or follow your work, how would they go about doing that? Well, they're certainly on social media to follow me on Twitter at PPBRights, and the best place to find, not only my writing, but the writing of all my colleagues at the Ethics and Public Policy Center is on our website, which is www.eppc.org. Well, Patrick T. Brown, a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, thank you so much for being with us on Family Policy Matters. You've been listening to Family Policy Matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week. To listen to the show online and to learn more about NC Family's work to inform, encourage, and inspire families across North Carolina, go to our website at ncfamily.org. Thanks again for listening, and may God bless you and your family.