McCloskey: School phone reforms still needed

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News,May 19, 2024

“I am an applied economist and the mother of three young children. On April 27, 2024, I wrote an opinion piece for The Dallas Morning News, “Phones are ruining childhood. Here are 3 steps Dallas ISD should take,” recommending a technology audit, playful recess, and banning smartphones for students on school campuses.

I had written a similar critique in the aftermath of COVID-19, when my kindergartener was required to carry a DISD-issued tablet to school and back in his backpack, alongside his turkey sandwich and juice box, with faulty safety controls and no clear communication with his parents.

These articles were built off of the burgeoning literature demonstrating the negative influences of children’s overexposure to screens in terms of distraction and compromised learning, addiction and weakened mental health, and the opportunity cost of forgone face-to-face interactions. Concerns about screen use and children have also been published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Surgeon General.

Most recently, this literature has been compiled and democratized in social scientist Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, which dedicates a section to the impact of technology in schools.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also recently released its first assessment of the impact of technology on learning, “Heavy Use of Tech in Classroom Can Lead to Worse Learning Outcomes.” The report finds that “even countries which have invested heavily in information and communication technologies … for education have seen no noticeable improvement in their performances in … reading, mathematics or science.”

In response to the piece, I received considerable feedback from other parents as well as from school and district administrators, including extremely helpful conversations with Dallas ISD. I wanted to share some of those questions, recommendations and conversations as we continue to think through the impact on technology and learning together.”

McCloskey: The motherhood issue no one will talk about

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, May 12, 2024

“It’s Mother’s Day. Each year I celebrate by staying home from church and having breakfast in bed. If you’re having such a day, perhaps continue with your magical glow by moving to the next column. Because this is going to get heavy fast.

Today of all days, I want to talk about how motherhood has fundamentally changed, relative to American history and relative to anywhere else in the world. The data tell the story best. In 1960, 5% of babies were born to unmarried mothers. In 1991, when the National Commission on Children raised this issue, it had risen to 25%. Now, about 40% of American babies are born to unmarried parents, according to research published by Child Trends. Whether a child is given a two-parent home — one of the biggest social advantages in life — is essentially a coin flip.

This is not a story about divorce. It’s not a story about cohabitation. It’s not even a story about teenage girls giving birth (the rate of which has plummeted). It’s about unpartnered women — and specifically women with a high school degree or less — increasingly choosing to become mothers alone.

As a result, a quarter of American children are raised in a home with a single parent (nearly always the mother), according to Pew Research. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. Truly. In China, it’s 3%. In Mexico, it’s 7%. In beautiful romantic France, it’s 16%. In Israel, it’s 5%. In Canada, it’s 15%.”

PODCAST: Speaking Of Kids

Abby McCloskey, First Focus on Kids, April 24, 2024

In this episode, our hosts Bruce Lesley and Messellech “Selley” Looby chat with Abby McCloskey, who directed the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families, a project bringing together 31 family policy leaders of diverse ideologies and included our co-host Bruce Lesley. The Convergence process issued a final report entitled In This Together: A Cross-Partisan Action Plan to Support Families with Young Children in America.

McCloskey discusses some of the collaborative’s cross-partisan policy recommendations, such as creating government structures focused explicitly on children and offering 12 weeks of paid parental leave. McCloskey emphasizes that bringing these recommendations to fruition will require bipartisan effort.

Today’s children are in crisis. They face rising maternal and infant mortality rates, a mental health epidemic, a public education system under attack, increasing homelessness, and other challenges. McCloskey outlines the importance of working through political polarization to create bipartisan solutions that address these and other issues affecting our nation’s children.

Stop Taxing the Life Out of Marriage

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, April 15, 2024

“Leave it to the government to discourage marriage. Especially when marriage rates are already cratering.

As families around the country file taxes this month, they might not realize that often their marriage leads to higher taxes than if they were single. These penalties range from light to heavy, depending on their household income, number of children, and whether both or only one spouse works.

A recent study by the Atlanta Fed found that the average lifetime net marriage tax is 2.69%. The rate rises to 3.71% on the lowest income bracket (earning up to $26,000 a year) and falls to 1.49% for the highest bracket (earning more than $103,100 a year). Notice that the average marriage penalty imposed on people with low incomes is roughly twice that incurred by the rich.

This might not sound like much, a few percentage points here and there. But for low-income women, this nets out to losing $60,000 over a lifetime, according to the Fed. Put another way, this is the equivalent of wiping out four years of full time work at the federal minimum wage level for a mom who says “I do.”

Eden's Apple is In Our Pockets

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, April 1, 2024

The iconic logo of our technical revolution — the symbol that represents all of human knowledge bound up in a handheld device — is an apple with a bite of it.

Maybe this is coincidence. Maybe it’s God’s sense of humor (we have to get ours from somewhere). Maybe it’s humanity’s continued defiance. But Apple’s logo smacks of Adam and Eve’s deceit and humanity’s fall as recorded in the Bible. That rebellion separated humans from God and from each other. The atomization that ensued mirrors our loneliness today.

These days, we’ve taken a bite out of another apple. It, too, promised to allow us to plumb the depths of human knowledge but the cost would be pulling us apart from each other and increasing our despair. Even now, perhaps it’s in your pocket, on your desk, in your kid’s backpack, on your nightstand; maybe all of them. The Apple with a bite is there, hiding in plain sight.

Its costs are in plain sight, too. I was thinking about this with Jonathan Haidt’s book released last week, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Haidt isn’t the only scholar tackling the connection between smartphones and our atomization, but he’s been ahead of the curve for a while now.

VIDEO: Brookings Event - Common Ground to Support Working Families

Brookings, April 3, 2024

Throughout 2023, the Convergence Collaborative brought together experts from across the political spectrum to find common ground on challenges facing working families with young children. The resulting consensus document was released in January of this year. The organization’s collaborative process is different from other attempts to find common ground on these issues because it emphasizes relationship-building and facilitated dialogue among people with deeply held convictions and diverse perspectives.

On April 3, join the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at Brookings to learn about the four pillars making up the Convergence Collaborative’s blueprint for action, and the Convergence process as a potential model for problem-solving in polarizing policy spaces.

Two members of the Collaborative–Lina Guzman (Child Trends) and Josh McCabe (Niskanen Center)–will join leader of the group Abby McCloskey (McCloskey Policy LCC) on a panel moderated by Brookings’ Molly Kinder to discuss the four areas of common ground for working families.

Following their conversation, Stuart Butler (Brookings), Maya MacGuineas (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget), and Lindsay Torrico (American Bankers Association Foundation) will broaden the issue to discuss finding common ground on polarizing issues with the New York Times’ Jessica Grose.

The event will run from 3:00 – 4:30 p.m. EDT, followed by a light reception.

Video of the event can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DKkCOHMjYU

The church is meant to be a choice, not an echo

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, March 24, 2024

“Some people have a picture of Mother Teresa hanging up in their home. If you grow up in a Republican household of all daughters, you might see a picture of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly instead. But dad, this column won’t be about Schlafly, per say.

It’s that the title of her bestselling manifesto, A Choice Not an Echo, has been haunting me lately. That’s because I feel as if the American evangelical church is at a risk of becoming an echo, not a choice.

Recent reporting on the church’s political engagement reads as an echo of our sad, toxic, loud and divided culture, fighting for power and dominance. To be sure, there are times and places for fighting. I’ll mention some later in this column.

But for the earliest Christians, the church presented an entirely different choice. We shouldn’t be too quick to ignore their example.”

The Kids Are Not All Right

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, March 18, 2024

We want life to be up and to the right. We want to end up with more money than we started with. We want our families to be less dysfunctional than the one we grew up in. We want better medicines, technologies, freedoms and art — for the world to become a more enlightened place.

Not only do we want these things, we can subconsciously believe they are our destiny — that progress is almost inevitable save for an accident or unexpected crisis. But it hasn’t been up-and-to-the right for our kids for a while now.

Let’s go back a few decades. The last time America had an official, comprehensive pulse on child well-being was the National Commission on Children in 1991. The commission was created by Congress “to serve as a forum on behalf of the children of the nation.” It was a bipartisan body whose 34 members were appointed by President George H.W. Bush, the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, and the speaker of the House of Representatives. Its final report posited the question: “Are children worse off?”

McCloskey: Our next president is gonna be Biden or Trump?

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, March 7, 2024

We dreaded this. On Super Tuesday, it happened. Texas and the others fell like dominoes. It’s a Trump-Biden rematch for 2024. Woof.

A dear friend asked me the other day why, in a country as big and diverse as ours, we couldn’t have someone other than these two old guys for president. One geriatric. One maniacal.

But up until now there has been a young, talented, Southern governor, immigrant, former U.N. ambassador and actual conservative in the Republican race for president who hasn’t flaunted the U.S. Constitution to stay in power: Nikki Haley.

When people have shared their voting intentions for the fall with pollsters, she’s held double-digit leads over President Joe Biden. Former President Donald Trump is in the low singles.

Ideally, parties wouldn’t put up their weakest candidate for the general; but their strongest one. Clearly, she’s stronger. Why didn’t she count? Why didn’t the normal people who care about democracy and decency or actual conservatism flood the primaries for her?

NPR: The Result Is Not the Weak Tea You'd Expect

Cory Turner, NPR, March 6, 2024

I couldn’t have been more proud to have led the Collaborative! Strong coffee, if I do say so:

“The challenges facing families with young children are legion.

From affording the costly basics — like diapers, clothes and food — to the exhausting search for high-quality, reasonably priced child care, parents and caregivers have their hands full. And it's hard to imagine government, as polarized as it is, agreeing on anything that might help.

And yet. A new report suggests there are bold moves that folks across the political spectrum can agree on.

The report is the result of a yearlong effort called the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families. Throughout 2023, the collaborative convened meetings among some 30 think-tankers, policy wonks, child development experts and government influencers — from the hard left to the far right — and tasked them with forging consensus on ways to help families. . . .”

What if our biggest sins are the ones we cannot see?

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, February 24, 2024

Wilber Wilberforce has me thinking about the costs of consumerism.

Unlike the slavery of the American South, slavery was something that most Brits could ignore. The atrocities and appalling conditions on slave ships from Africa to the West Indies occurred out of eyesight and earshot of most people in England, although British ports and companies participated in the trade. For Wilberforce, there would have been more visible wrongs to address in the vulgar and violent 18th century. Prostitution and brothels were rampant, including child prostitution. Public hangings for petty crimes were entertainment. . .

When we look at history, it seems so obvious what the wrongs were and so obvious that history would arc for justice. Do we have the courage to look around our lives today? What if any atrocities are hidden for the seemingly simple pleasures we enjoy? We learn from Wilberforce that staring them in the face is the first step toward change

The IVF Ruling Clearly Confuses Everything

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, March 3, 2024

Someone accidentally dropped frozen embryos in Alabama, and it’s full-on politics. Welcome to the politics of reproduction and human life in 2024.

A recent Alabama Supreme Court decision, made 8-1, legally protects embryos under the state’s wrongful death statute. It prompted in vitro fertilization facilities in the state to pause treatment. The ruling wasn’t intentionally halting IVF, according to what I’ve read. It was intended to dignify the embryos with status beyond a cellular clump.

But of course it has a chilling effect. Who would want to work in a place where you could be liable for murdering kids? What parent would want to choose between being impregnated with quintuplets or being sued? Or go through the daily shots and bruises and pills to only remove one egg for a hefty fee with a slim chance of it working?

Meanwhile, cross over a few state lines and you can legally get an abortion at 40 weeks gestation. What times we are in. How confused we are.

Can’t Washington give us an honest deal?

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2024

I recently hosted a Senate reception for a bipartisan group on family policy that I’ve led the last year. At the top of the event, Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., gave brief remarks about their new bipartisan, bicameral working group on paid family leave. Their collaboration is a rare glimmer of hope for reform that would benefit American families. But it was another topic that got my attention.

In his remarks, Cassidy turned to his left and raised his arm, saying there’s this huge need over here, referring to the need of American families with young children. Then he turned to his right and lifted his arm, and said, “but did I mention, there’s this huge fiscal thing over here?”

I gave an imperceptible head nod. But in my mind, I stood up in the front row and applauded while colorful balloons dropped from the ceiling of the Russell Senate Office Building.

We need more policymakers talking like this. Being real about the tradeoffs and our problems. “Giving the honest deal,” as my former colleague and legendary campaign strategist Steve Schmidt would say during the 2020 Howard Schultz exploratory presidential campaign we worked on together.

Politicians everywhere have ideas for A New Deal, which mostly involves increasing spending or cutting off revenue. President Joe Biden tried to spend more than $2 trillion with his Build Back Better better plan. President Donald Trump went on a $1 trillion to $2 trillion (depending on what estimate you use) revenue reducing exercise with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Few have been willing to acknowledge the tradeoffs that America is facing with a historic level of debt. This requires caution both on the spending and revenue sides. Our economy’s impressive soft landing in 2024 coming out of inflation is as comparable to the challenge ahead as a moon landing.

REPORT: In This Together

Published on February 6, 2024

“The Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families met regularly throughout 2023. We are a cross-partisan, cross-sector group of leaders who have dedicated our careers to improving the lives of children and families in America. To our knowledge, we are the most ideologically and sectorally diverse group to address family policy that has convened in recent decades. We came together against a backdrop of historic polarization and political divides. This report is our action plan to help low-to-moderate income families with young children flourish.”

PRESS RELEASE: Convergence launches a cross-partisan action plan to support families with young children in America

Bringing together 32 diverse leaders in family policy, the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families released recommendations for federal policymakers, states, employers, and philanthropy to support families across party lines.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Convergence Center for Policy Resolution released a new Blueprint for Action with consensus solutions for tackling deep challenges facing American families with young children. The Blueprint release will be accompanied by a public reception on Capitol Hill tonight featuring remarks from Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). The process of this Collaborative was featured in The New York Times article, by Jessica Grose, 'Couples Therapy', but for Politics.

Forged by more than 30 leaders spanning the political spectrum and from very different professional domains and life experiences, the recommendations aim to change the story around parenting in the US, rethink cash support, ensure a wider variety of high-quality care options, and better support families with new children.

"Leading the most ideologically and sectorally diverse group dedicated to addressing family policy in recent decades has been an immense honor," said Abby McCloskey, Director of the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families and Founder of McCloskey Policy LLC. "Recent events, such as the expiration of pandemic-era support for families, the setback in passing the Biden Administration's Build Back Better proposal, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade — with states adopting radically different approaches in the aftermath — made it challenging to anticipate the outcomes of this diverse collaboration. I take great pride in the remarkable work the Collaborative has accomplished."

Convergence served as a neutral convenor for the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families. Convergence Collaboratives are inclusive and cooperative processes, informed by social science, in which diverse groups of leaders come together to build trust, forge higher-ground consensus solutions, and move forward in unlikely alliances to achieve constructive change on seemingly intractable issues.

"Parenthood in America is increasingly challenging, and the urgency to support our nation's working families cannot be overstated," said Convergence Interim CEO and seasoned consensus-builder, Mariah Levison. "As the consensus among our participants illustrates, there is a clear pathway for a diverse group of changemakers to strengthen support systems in America, ensuring the needs of both children and parents are met. These solutions will not only make it easier to raise our children well but also foster economic opportunity and community connectedness, which are both key to reducing our division."

This project was made possible thanks to the generous support of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

About Convergence Center for Policy Resolution 

Convergence is the leading organization bridging divides to solve critical issues. Through our time-tested collaborative problem-solving methodology, we bring people together across ideological, political, and identity lines to improve the lives of Americans and strengthen democracy. For more information, visit convergencepolicy.org.

SOURCE Convergence Center for Policy Resolution

Biden should take border deal

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, February 1, 2024

Immigration is 2024′s biggest issue. Except for potential world war, but that’s for another day. What a win a deal on the southern border would be. Let’s start with what it means for the presidential election and then move closer to home.

With abortion off the table after the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, immigration has become the biggest visceral issue for the GOP in 2024. Donald Trump is building his campaign around it. We can’t have a secure country without a secure border. Republicans are right about that.

Immigration denial could cost Biden re-election. Fortunately, Americans love a good conversion story. “I was lost and now I’m found.” And a bipartisan Congressional deal has come knocking on Biden’s door, combining aid for the Ukrainians in their defense against the Russian invasion and money for border security.

Biden should take the deal and pronounce, over the progressive howls, that securing the border will be the focus of his domestic attention for the rest of 2024. In fact, he should ask for Democrats to strengthen the deal. The current negotiated threshold is that it would only kick in if 5,000 migrants crossed illegally in a day.

For a re-election campaign still searching for its message, voila: “I kept a demagogue out of the White House, fought Putin from invading the West, oversaw a soft landing for the economy (despite my role in the inflationary part), and finally shut down the southern border.” Close your eyes and it’s practically conservative.