On Dobbs anniversary, red states have made progress, but more is needed

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning New, June 24, 2024

At a minimum, I would love to see Texas begin a Department of Child and Family Flourishing wherein more dollars would flow to families; where philanthropy and the private sector could share best practices and pool resources; where policymakers could have access to more frequent data on the well-being of young children and parents in our state; and where pilots of all types to improve child poverty and maternal and infant health would be encouraged.

Right now, red states can use permissive abortion policies in blue states to distract from the need to care for mothers and babies. Most blue states have robust services for women and children and yet seem proud of their few limitations on abortion, even after the point where a fetus can feel pain. President Joe Biden seems to think that because I find Trump dangerous, then I must be all in for abortion on demand. The extremes of both sides act as a safety net for the other.

I’m reminded of that old G.K. Chesterton quote from Orthodoxy: “The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

These days, conservatives are keen to emphasize justice and protection; liberals to emphasize equity and autonomy. But untethered to love and unbound from each other, we get to strange places.

And so, even with marginal progress, I am still waiting on the state that can support life and love on both sides of the womb. That is where we are on this anniversary.

Yes, surgeon general, label social media

Abby McCloskey, Dallas News, June 23, 2024

“This week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote in The New York Times: “It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.” This is a fabulous idea. A bit little and late, but let’s get this train going.

We have more than a decade’s reason to act: A generation of kids who have used social media as a playground with no one telling them it was covered in poison ivy and used needles and venomous spiders and predatory adults lurking under the slides. Even if parents did warn them, well, everyone else was doing it and the itches and bites didn’t show up until a few years later and so things seemed fine until they weren’t.

The warning should be implemented immediately. Doing so is essentially free and top-down, which makes it easier than other surgeon general warnings on things like risky sex or obesity.

It might make people think twice before giving Bobby an iPhone for calling mom after Little League practice gets out. It should certainly put some pressure on schools to amp up their experiments with phone lock pouches instead of students lighting up with a Surgeon General warning item on campus. (I recently was allowed to preview a survey from a nearby school showing that teachers want phones taken from campus, parents too, but students want to keep them. I’m sure they wanted to keep the cigs too, back in the day.)

Politicians around the world have their finger to the wind. It’s blowing against Big Tech. AI seems too big to tame, so we have to take action where we can, like limiting kids’ exposure to addictive content and devices that destroy their mental health.”

Republicans have more in common with the French than they think

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, June 17, 2024

“I’ve just returned from Paris, which was abuzz in preparation for the Summer Olympics. At a cafe one evening hiding from a deluge of rain, when it became obvious my French did not extend beyond bon soir, the waiter asked where I was from. “There’s a Paris in Texas,” he smirked. I can easily imagine a similar jab coming from a Texan should a Parisian come to visit: “We’ve got all the Paris we need right here, thank you very much.”

After all, France has long been regarded as the embodied vision of the American left. In Paris (you know which one), people of all ages are riding bikes with baskets down the streets, some wearing fashionable trench coats. All the cars are electric, no gas-guzzling SUVs to be found. Everyone carries reusable bags, and water-bottle caps use so little plastic they’re more akin to a flap. . . .

. . . . But on this visit to Paris, I wasn’t imagining these progressive ideas spawning similar experiments stateside. If anything, I was surprised to find three very conservative aspects of the culture I hadn’t noticed before.

For example, did you know that in many parts of France there is no school on Wednesdays? In “liberal” cases, there’s school on Wednesday mornings, but still none in the afternoons. That time is reserved for family and extracurriculars. I spoke with many mothers who have Wednesdays with their children. In the States, it tends to be conservative Christian schools that prioritize parental time over a full-time, institutionalized learning.

As a result, the French have less of the modern parental shuffling to organized activities after school with fast-food dinner in car seats. Family dinners tend to be preserved. Students also have up to an hour and a half for lunch at school the other days, during which time they can go home. In Dallas ISD, I was allowed to have lunch with my second-grader once this whole school year and never with my kindergartner.”

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.