America is a much harder place to be a child than it has any excuse to be, and a much harder place to have and raise a child than it has any possible reason to be: It’s hard to find a politician who’ll disagree with either proposition, and harder yet to find one with any intention of doing anything about it. When it comes to the crucial business of caring for children and families, our country is an international embarrassment.
American children suffer in ways children living in countries of comparable wealth and development do not: More kids live in relative poverty; more babies die; more grade schoolers routinely miss meals. And American parents—particularly American mothers—suffer too, in ways our international counterparts do not: Our maternal mortality rates are much higher; our options for taking leave to give birth and recover from it are far more limited; our resources for support are radically circumscribed. Our birth rate is as low as it’s ever been, and a rising share of childless young adults in the United States now report that they do not ever plan to have children.
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