Questioning the status quo on the economics of family life

Our Sunday Visitor has posted a new column I wrote for its Daily Take blog, on the economics of raising a family today.��In the piece, I��question the choice that most young families are forced to make in a society structured to accommodate a two-working-parent home:��we must either choose to have both parents work —��in which case��the��family suffers��in a variety of ways associated with regular childcare outside the home —��or one parent stays home, in which case the family suffers in a whole other set of ways.

My main point is that lay Catholics — who belong to a Church whose social teaching insists on the centrality of family life, not only for the��well-being of each family and the individuals who make it up, but for the good health of society — should push harder for a conversation about better solutions.

I’m well aware, by the way, that my piece does not even mention single-parent families, which are of course quite common today. I has a hard time sticking to the word count I was given for this column even without getting into that aspect of the question. But the fact is, the fact of single-parent families only makes my point stronger and more urgent.

Read the whole post here.