Criminally Bad Parenting, Ctd

Douthat takes a deeper look at “the obligations of conservatives, who tend to support measures that encourage single parents to take jobs, to fiercely oppose policies and practices that then punish such parents when they leave their kids unsupervised.” He suggests building on “direct, paycheck-based success rather than trying to build out the existing K-through-12 system,” and warns against looking to Europe for answers:

[T]he more regimented and mandate-thick a society’s child care system, the more likely it is to have unexpected and perverse consequences for parents and families whose lives don’t quite fit the system’s implicit norms — which could mean anyone from high-achieving professional women (who often fare better in the laissez-faire U.S. than under family-friendly socialism) to would-be stay-at-home parents (who get nothing from a government-run child care system, and who can be effectively prodded into the workforce by the taxes required to pay for it).

Which is why it’s a little unfortunate that American liberalism is pressing so hard right now on ideas (universal daycare, mandated family leave) that could just import some of the European system’s problems to our shores.

Ross returns to the practical childcare issues for struggling families within the US:

Whatever policy outcomes we’re seeking for working families, I still want to resist one possible implication here, because by allowing that it’s reasonable to debate whether policy can do more for parents in Debra Harrell’s position I’m in no way conceding that she actually did anything wrong or problematic, or for that matter that letting one’s children roam or play unsupervised is ever necessarily a sign that government assistance is needed, stat.

My Sunday column began with a childhood anecdote, but I think the far better anecdata comes from today’s piece by Michael Brendan Dougherty, who unlike myself actually grew up with a single mother, somewhat outside the upper middle class cocoon. Part of his argument, and it’s an important one, is that whatever we do to help working parents cope, we should also want to live in a society where parents — regardless of their material situation — feel entirely comfortable leaving their kids to play in park while they work, or letting them wander the woods and streets near their house, or leaving them home alone for a few hours under an older sibling’s supervision.

Michael Kress at Parents, responding to Ross’ column, is more sympathetic to Europe’s approach:

Affordable, reliable, and safe childcare is a necessary component of a functioning society, especially one that expects—requires, even—parents to work. And so we need to figure out a way to guarantee it to all working parents. In Europe, “all European countries offer government subsidies and regulation support to early childhood care,” according to the European Union’s website. “These measures include tax breaks, vouchers, subsidies paid to parents or to the care provider; and in several European countries, capping of childcare costs relative to household income, or by obliging employers to support childcare costs (for instance in the Netherlands).”

I don’t know what form this sort of policy should take here in the United States, but whether it’s tax breaks or subsidies or publicly funded day-care centers or something else entirely, without addressing this problem, we will see many more Debra Harrells. …

Our public policy must recognize the realities of today’s families, especially the huge number of single parents (and the correlation between single parenthood and poverty). In addition, many families today lack the extensive familial and social networks that may have, in the past, provided (free) childcare so mom and/or dad could work. This is not just a problem for the very poor. There is nothing optional about working for most people trying to support their kids, and childcare could easily be beyond a single parent’s means.

As parents, most of us have said things to our kids like, “I don’t have eyes in the back of my head,” or, “I can’t be in two places at once.” For the single moms who must be at work in order to feed their families but have no one else to supervise their children, these are not flippant throw-away lines; they are realities that we as a society must help fix.

More blogging on bad parenting here and here, and some reader responses here.