"Mother Knows Best"

Conservative parenting doctrine part 2. How the deeply rooted and problematic gender norms of women needed to stay at home is making life miserable for all of us. Why can't we have a working childcare policy in the United States? 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back to Death by Doctrine. I'm MJ.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

I'm Holly.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

The anticipated by us, we are anticipating this, second part of the authoritarian slash conservative parenting doctrines. What are we calling this one?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Thanks to MJ's stroke of genius. We are calling this Mother Knows Best.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Took us a solid 15 minutes to come up with that.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Yeah, we might put that in the outtakes. Just kidding. We didn't record it.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Okay, so Mother Knows Best. Where does this doctrine come from? There's a lot that we have written down, so let's just get right into it.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Yeah. Uh let me tell you, I am very passionate about this topic.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Um I skimmed through Holly's script before we started recording, and this is the most heated I've ever seen in. What makes you passionate about this? Let's start there.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah, this is interesting because I'm not a mother currently. I am a woman. I'm not a mother, but this has always been something that to me I am really passionate about. It's an intersection of social policy and economics and like society just all failing. Because what we're going to talk about is childcare policy and the doctrine in our country that is preventing us from having like a successful solid childcare policy that has been achieved in other democratic societies. So to me, this is like this is a solvable problem, right? It's something that the majority of American families would say we need better childcare support, more affordability. It's something that we have policy solutions for, but historically, for decades and decades, we've just completely fallen short. And to me, that is both infuriating and really interesting. So that explains the length and the fire of my script.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

It's one of those unfortunately uniquely American problem. Other developed countries have almost completely solved this, or at least addressed it to an adequate degree, whereas America is still, I don't know, twiddling their thumbs on this issue. So tell me about the history of this concept of daycare and childcare, because it's probably not always a thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

It hasn't been, yeah. I focused on American history since we'll be tracing this doctrine in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Uniquely American problem. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

So in early American history, like children were present in the workplace, in the sense that when women were working, children were present as well. They were raising children while working on farms, doing household labor, or conducting the work available to them at home. And considering enslaved women who were working long hours in agriculture or tending to their slave master's home in children, all the while, you know, necessitating the care of their own kids at home with their community members. So, like for all of early American history, children were being strapped to backs, they were running around the house, they were under a foot while work was being done. So there wasn't necessarily a huge separation of child care and work.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

That was sort of society pre-industrialized. There is not that much separation between you, the person, and the work that you had to do. The concept of leaving your home to go to a job where you get a set wage is like a very modern concept.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

So as America industrialized, we started seeing early childhood care and education develop along with the more formal movement for public education. So cities are forming, people are working outside the home. And at the same time, like liberal ideas are starting to evolve, people start buying into the idea of public education. And along with that, much more slowly comes the idea that, hey, we have all these kids who are being left home while their parents work. Probably we should be doing something with them as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

And also it serves a very practical function, besides, well, the parents are working, so these would be somewhere the children's to be so that they don't cause trouble. But also they're starting to realize that the more educated the child is, they're better workers. They're more productive workers if they're educated. So it's like, yeah, it's like liberal, but also like very practical.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Yeah. And it makes sense. Like you can't have one-year-olds abandoned at home all day. Someone's gotta stop in and do something. So in the late 1800s, we'd see the first like really big childcare solutions becoming part of the social fabric sprung out of necessity. The Civil War, for example, much like wars to come, required women to fill working roles while men were at war. This is particularly happening in the North. You know, men are headed south to war. It's a more industrialized society. So women are filling the necessary roles, and that leads to some of the earliest federal support for daycare. Of course, that doesn't last long. When the men come back, they return to work. Women are expected to go back to their original roles.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

What a familiar story.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah, we're gonna see that repeated a couple times. Um then, late 1800s, heading into the 20th century, mass immigration and industrialization inspire even greater attention to the plight of working women and their children. And this is often led by charity groups. So though women working to the degree they were, especially like Irish immigrants, for example, it was a reality. It was still heavily socially stigmatized. So a lot of these charity groups are like viewing this as a charity case, right? Something needs to be done, but this is not the ideal situation, is women working outside the home.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Yeah, they're coming from a place of pity rather than like empathy, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah. So by the end of the 19th century, you have many cities developing networks of usually faith-based charitable programs led by women. So this has always been like a very woman-led effort.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Wonder why.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Looking to support the children of working immigrants in other poor classes. So that's kind of where we start to see things like church childcare, daycare happening outside the home, daycare even happening on like cotton mills and in factory settings. So, you know, our first workplace sponsored childcare.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I think it's interesting to note that this concept is not new, which makes the America's failure to address these issues even more stupid.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

We've been dealing with the same problem for so long.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Yeah. Story of America.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yes. So we'll fast forward to the 1920s, and this is the reformers' era. Progressive social reform is very in vogue. Interest in women's welfare in childcare is now more motivated by a wave of educated feminist reformers. So they're looking at this as a social issue, and this led to the creation of the US Children's Bureau in 1912. This is the first government agency in the world focused on women's and children's welfare, and it's primarily led by women. The first director of the US Children's Bureau is, in fact, a woman.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Where is this in Apush and other related US history class?

SPEAKER_02 6:41

I cannot complain about this because my A-Push, that is uh listeners, AP US history, was really into the reformers era. Like we went so in depth in this era that I actually remember so many reformers' names. So props to New York State Public Schools.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Oh, let me tell you, that is not the typical uh US history experience.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Yes, I do not doubt it. But I did not hear of the US Children's Bureau, which, to be fair, has a kind of a mixed bag in policy, but they were really doing something new. So with the US Children's Bureau support, one of the first really widespread welfare efforts meant to handle childcare needs for working women came in the form of mothers' pensions or widows' pensions. And the idea of this makes a lot of sense. These were cash infusions provided by local or state governments meant to help poor single mothers keep their children at home. So, in this era, to give a little bit context as to the social goals here, before this period, people tended to view poverty even worse than we view it today. It was really popular to look at poverty as like a genetic curse. Like parents passed poverty down onto their children, and therefore a lot of people adopted like a child separation idea. Like we should take poor children away from their poor parents and raise them somewhere different. Pretty tough.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Yeah, and this idea sort of evolved later into eugenics of like, well, that's just sterilize all these people. Like they're poor, they can't have children, and it led to some really truly horrifying policies in US history.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Yes, Indian child removal, etc. Some of the darkest stains on American history.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yeah, force sterilizations.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

By the 1920s, you know, social reformers are changing their view of this. So I was a little hesitant about this policy, but I understand their motivation. At this time, poor working mothers were often like got to the point where they were forced to put their children up for adoption or send them to orphanages if they couldn't afford them. So early feminists, like their goal was to enable working mothers to keep their children. But even more so, a lot of women involved in this movement were interested in giving women enough money that they didn't have to work. So the whole idea was obviously the best option is for women to be home with their kids, not working. So they invented mothers' pensions or widows' pensions. If you don't have a man to support you, we'll give you money and we'll like subsidize your ability to care for your children.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

I also have mixed feelings about this because on one hand, it's like a stone's throw away from universal basic income, but on the other hand, it's still very the gender ideal, it's drawn clear into sand. So I don't know how I feel about this.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yeah, it's like 1920 social reform. It's like really you're seeing the pioneering of some cool ideas. The intentions were not often cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah, they're testing universal basic income for a kind of problematic reason.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yes. And the growth of the mother's pension was really remarkable. Like they spread like wildfire once supported by the U.S. Children's Bureau. I believe at their height, 39 states had mothers' pensions in place. So by 1919, like this was really across the nation a popular policy.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

However, yeah, 39 states in the context of US is a lot of states.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Yes, especially at the time. Uh, even Hawaii had this. So we were geographically, they really hit a lot of targets. However, pensions were unevenly distributed and they were often inadequately funded. These did not have like really robust federal funding behind them at the time. The federal government looked a lot different than it does now. And usually they did not replace the need for working income. So it didn't achieve the goal of, you know, mothers being able to take care for their children instead of working. So next it's a policy failure, right? Like you still have mothers who need to work. They may have more money, that's good. But you're not really solving the issue of like how do they find care for their children? Is that care good quality? See, we still have like a fundamental social issue here.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, you see this with welfare programs even today, where the welfare is truly not enough to actually solve the problem. And a lot of opponents of these welfare programs will sort of point at that and be like, see, it doesn't do anything. Well, it's like, well, you didn't fund it properly.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

It's not enough. If you want women to not have to work, you have to give them enough money not to work. Yeah. That is kind of a big ask, but that was the goal, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah, you failed.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Yeah. And even so, a lot of women who qualified did not receive these pensions. So the waiting list for pensions far outstripped the number of women who could receive them, meaning a lot of people weren't being served. And of course, a lot of these women were being discriminated against. Welfare programs at this time, and honestly, like we never got over this, were very preoccupied with separating out who did and did not deserve aid based on moral character and work ethic.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Here we go.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Which very obviously coincided with immense racial and ethnic bias.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

I wonder why.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Yes. So, you know, who deserves aid? Not black women, not immigrant women. And it even was biased against married women. Like married women were excluded from this program because if you're married, your husband is supposed to be supporting you.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Now God forbid you have an abusive husband.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

A lot of women were not in healthy relationships. You know, maybe their husbands wanted to support them, but they were poor as well. They were not getting support. Maybe their husbands were not treating them well. Maybe their husbands weren't giving money back to the family. These are all like issues that aren't being addressed at all. Like if you're married, you're not part of this. It's called a widow's pension for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

I'm interested to see how this evolved because I could see two outcomes out of this. One outcome is probably the less likely outcome of like, wow, these are really deep societal problems. We really need to invest even more effort to address these root underlying issues so that we don't rely on these welfare programs. I don't think that's gonna happen. Actually, I know that's not gonna happen. I don't know why I have to think.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Yeah, you like live in the world, MJ. You know what's going on here.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

The other outcome, and I wait with bated breath to see whether you confirm, is they will just say, ah, this doesn't work and stop.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yeah. So mother's pensions fell out of fashion during the 1920s. Oh no, it's such a short lifespan. Right. Like all these problems were really evident at the time. And in the 1920s, what happens is you have an economic boom, right? So more people are better off than they were before. And this like really visual, like ever-present idea of suffering just falls out of the public consciousness in the same way. So the social reform efforts of the 1910s are kind of giving way to the roaring 20s. And we'll see this pattern repeat over the rest of American history. The next time we have a major intervention in childcare policy is during World War II. We all know what led to this: Rosie the Riveter, unprecedented female participation in the workforce, and thus the demand for childcare. The expansion of the New Deal enabled tons of government funding. Um, the government helped construct and operate over 3,000 daycare centers during World War II. And while it wasn't even sufficient for the demand, it was a huge sea change for the time. While women working outside the home was still socially stigmatized despite it being incredibly necessary, childcare was happening. Daycare centers were being run. We were seeing like federal intervention to make this happen. And fun fact, the idea of Lachke kids came from World War II. Like Lachke kids is an idea that formed from like kids being left in daycare centers while their moms worked.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

This entire era of Rosie Derivator and the changing attitudes or behavior regarding childcare and women in the workforce. The pessimism me when I read this story is like, so you're telling me we could have solved this problem. If the will was there, we could build a bunch of daycare centers. You know, if the will was there, we could have women in the workforce. But uh we don't for ostensibly no reason.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Right. Like we only see major movement and major support in times of absolute necessity. Women need to be working roles because men are at war. The Civil War, World War I, World War II, we see this happening on repeat. And then once that immediate crisis fades away, the support for solving that issue does as well. We all are saying, hey, we're back to normal. Women need to be back in the home. Only mother should be raising their children.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

There's a bit of trivia that I love. So Rosie the Riveter came out of World War II to encourage women entering the workforce. And when the war was over, I can't, for the life of me, find the photograph of this, but they put Rosie in an apron.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Oh, how dare they?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

They did like counter-propaganda. As soon as the war is over, they published a bunch of things where the same Rosie that was the Riveter is now the model of like a stay-at-home mom. And that to me is just such a whiplash.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah, there's a reason that image isn't in our APUS history textbooks. Not nearly as iconic.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, not as motivational. Goes to show how a lot of things is manufactured. A lot of our norms are completely arbitrary and doesn't have to be this way.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Yeah. So that happens. Rosie the Riveter goes back to the kitchen.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Boom.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

And we again do not see major movement until the 1950s. So in 1954, um, we had the creation of the child care tax credit. Attentive listeners will be aware that this is something that was hotly debated in the 2020s. Reformers pushed for more federal support in this time for then private daycare organizations trying to convince politicians that children's welfare was an important consideration, even if it was still too socially stigmatized to really rally for working mothers. So reformers at this time were taking the approach of, like, hey, let's focus on children's welfare, right? That can be a winning issue, but acknowledging that women are working outside the home, you know, if that has always been the case for decades now, is like a political landfill. So politicians weren't willing to support the idea of a policy that would enable women to work outside the home, even though for most Americans that was the lived reality.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

The fact that children's welfare is a talking point, is kind of sad how it's not like the default. They had to push for this.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Instead of just being like, yeah, you know, we should help people out.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Conservatives who are opposed to childcare policy never really focus on the children. Like, even if you don't believe that women should be working outside the home, the reality is they are. So are the children who who need care being left in the best place possible? That should be something everyone cares about. But because they're so reticent to say, like, hey, we'll support you even if you're not living our ideal household situation, we just get nothing done. So that's the story of the 50s and the 60s. Nixon vetoed a universal child care act in 1971. So that was kind of like the last big push we had. And from there we're just kind of stuck. Daycare centers are popular, but increasingly expensive and hard to staff. They're a fundamental market failure in the United States. I'll get into why that is. But we just fundamentally have a mismatch between the demand for childcare centers, the need for available, reliable, and affordable childcare, and the fact that you need well-trained, safe staff to run these things, and that is expensive. The market completely fails here. It needs government intervention. And with the absolute lack of solutions being offered by the federal government, many families are basically just on the brink. And they're doing what we've always done since the 1800s, just doing their best trying to balance childcare and work.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

If you know any parents or new parents within the last, I want to say decade, you will know the absolute horror and war stories that they have to go through to get childcare. Like wait lists that are a year long at some places, or you have to pay your nanny your entire paycheck just to have someone to take care of the child at home. Like ask any new parents in the last 10 years. Like the stories are horrifying.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

So that's today. And just some like some some stats on where we are today.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Okay, let's see.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

As of 2021, only 18% of parents, like as a population, any given parent, doesn't work. So that's the majority of parents are working.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah, makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

So stay-at-home moms and especially stay-at-home dads are a minority of the population. Most people need some sort of child care solution, whether that is a daycare center or a nanny or a nanny share or an au pair or a family member.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

All of them expensive.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Something. They just need something. As of 2013, childcare costs are about 10% of the average American's income. I would not be surprised if that has increased in the past decade.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Absolutely, definitely has increased.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

And then childcare requires a higher proportion of lower income Americans' income, right? So I think the stat is about 30% for lower income families can go to childcare, which is astronomical.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

As astronomical as that is, that still sounds low to me. Right. The stories of people, their entire paycheck going to child care is like quite common.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Like 30% is what like the higher level you're supposed to pay on housing, let alone childcare.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

They're paying rent in childcare essentially.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Yeah. But even if you're higher income, higher income families spend more money. So that shows us that wealthier families deal with issues too, because you're not just saying, okay, here's the cost of childcare. Oh, well, it's less of my income. You're saying if I have the money, I will spend more for licensed care, for higher quality care. We will substitute out for better options if we can afford them. So there are trade-offs being made at all levels. Lower income families can sometimes only afford like unlicensed care or like worse solutions, and middle and higher income families are spending a lot of money on like safer, higher quality options. So like kind of nobody is really winning here.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Truly like a deep societal problem that we have.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

And meanwhile, on the labor end of the spectrum, childcare workers in 2019 earned an average wage of$11.65 per hour. And nearly all of that workforce is women, and 40% of that workforce are people of color. So this is really highly woman, women of color, immigrant-based workforce. They're underpaid for what they do. There's like a fundamental failure because families can't necessarily afford the higher wages that we should be paying childcare workers, but childcare workers cannot do this job with all of the hours and the labor it demands and get underpaid. So that's where we need some government intervention, right? This is not going to be solved by the market. Childcare just has too much involved. We need more support.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

This is not just for childcare. There's so many things in our society that the free market simply cannot solve. It's one of the many cases where there needs to be some form of coordination. It's a societal problem and it requires like societal solutions, not just dollars.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

So why can't we get there? That's what took me to the actual doctrine of our episode.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Oh boy. Okay, here we go.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Why can't we achieve it? Many countries in Europe have achieved a combination of paid parental leave and child care subsidiation for daycare centers that not only allows like working parents to stay home for the earliest months of their children's lives, but also enables them to find reliable care so that when they return to work, they have that option. So it's not that this is impossible.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Oh, it's very possible.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

But in the United States, we have floundered for decades.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Almost a century? Yeah. We are so behind.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

So fundamentally, I think the doctrine and how we landed up mother knows best is that fundamentally, I think American society just cannot shake the idea that there is something natural and unalienable about women staying home with their children.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Women are the only ones who should be raising their kids. And if women are outside of the home, then society is broken. That is the theology that they're working with.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

The belief in the nuclear family is so strong that any deviation is seen as a moral aberration. Therefore, they're not good people, and therefore we shouldn't care about them. That's at the root of a lot of our issues, including this one, including the failure to address childcare at a societal level.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Yeah. We're in 2026. Fundamentally, women are closer than ever, than we ever have been historically to achieving gender parity in the workplace. Our workforce participation is high. We have more opportunities, and yet we somehow don't have the popular support for some of the essential policies that would just like enable these women to do this a lot easier. Like the things that a lot of women are already doing, working, achieving in their education and careers and raising kids. Like a lot of women are doing this all at the same time. Why do we insist on it being so difficult? On the whole, I am not personally against anyone's individual choice here. Like if your individual belief is that one parent would prefer to be home with a young child than use childcare services, that is not a problem to me. Like child care and work is a highly personal choice for any parent, but we don't make these choices in a vacuum, right? And I think that's really important to separate. I see a lot of people can start taking these things very personally, but it's very clear that on the whole, Americans cannot separate parenting from gender. The most recent polling that I could find indicates what we probably already know. 60% of Americans in a 2014 P research poll believed that children were better off with one parent at home. 50% of Americans thought children were better off with their mother at home. And only 8% of Americans thought children were better off with their father as a stay-at-home parent. So, like, that's just gender, right? There's nothing there but gender.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Gender is everywhere. Ubiquitous ideology that permeates every aspect of our being, including childcare. The notion that the father is also a parent and not just a breadwinner is so baked in to the point where you see on social media where I don't know if this is still a thing, but if you record a video of a guy changing a diaper, the response is very different than if you court a video of a mom changing a diaper. For some reason, a dad taking care of their child is just seen as such a oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

And I get it because it's like it sucks, but we do have to praise dads who openly are like, yeah, I parent and I take on the tasks.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

As ridiculous as it is.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Because they have to model somehow that it's okay socially to be a good dad. It's fundamentally a broken concept.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Ah, jeez. It irritates me. Yeah, 60% of Americans believe children are better off with one parent at home, meaning that one parent has to stay at home and therefore not working.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

And keep in mind that people believe that while only 18% of parents don't work. Like only 18% of all parents are stay-at-home parents. It's not the reality.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Directly contradicts reality, which actually that's not unique to this. Americans believe in a lot of weird things.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

It's an ideal, right? For some reason, the American ideal has settled on the idea of largely a male breadwinner and a woman stay-at-home mom. So yeah, I think kind of policy level, most reasonable people would arrive at kind of a similar conclusion. Like we should make it as possible as we can for families to provide for their children the way they see fit. So some families that might be working full-time with a daycare solution. Others, it will be one parent works part-time, or you have family providing some care, or maybe you have a stay-at-home parent.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

All those options are good.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

All of those individual options are good. Like I don't believe in any policy solution that makes any of those things unachievable. I think a variety of attempts can like help make those choices available to Americans.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Just help people. Is that so hard to believe in?

SPEAKER_02 26:11

But I think a problem with childcare policy and where this doctrine really breaks things for these possibilities is that again, we don't make choices in a vacuum. And daycare, because it's suffering from that fundamental market failure we mentioned, it's less and less than an affordable option for the families who want and need that. So while we continue to like test around the edges with different options for making raising children more affordable and more accessible, our lack of ability to like subsidize daycares, like we really just need to subsidize daycares, is cutting off a really important outlet for like so many Americans.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Like that doesn't have to be the only solution, but that has to be a part of the solution.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

It does have to be part of it. Even if it means that some parents won't benefit because they don't want to use daycare. It has to be part of the fabric.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

And that's okay. That's how society works. You can't have everything cater to you. I am not over 65, but I think Medicare is great.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Yeah. I am not even a mother, and I am so passionate about this.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Yeah, exactly. The notion that you must receive everything that you pay in taxes is a plague on the American psyche.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

So where we're at is like we actually do have a lot of public figures advocating for this solution. Many prominent Democrats have advocated for subsidized childcare again and again at the federal level, at the state level. Many states do have some forms of subsidized childcare that works in concert with federal funds. We'll talk about that. But over and over, as these bills have been proposed, Republicans have repeatedly blocked these efforts.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Here we go.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

What is their reasoning? So I quoted the Heritage Foundation.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

God, no.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

Like, right to the source. Why do we not believe in subsidizing childcare? Well, they say, quote, Democrats want to create a new federal entitlement for childcare subsidies that would redistribute taxpayer dollars to high-income families in high-cost states. End quote.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

First of all, it's false, but even if it is true, it goes back to that notion of like, I must get everything that I pay for in taxes back, or just don't tax me. Neither of them good.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

I think the idea of high cost states here is so telling, right? A huge part of this is that they don't want anything that would benefit families in blue states. Childcare is especially like this market failure is really notable in expensive cities and in expensive states because the cost of living is higher, wages need to be higher, the cost of childcare is even more unsustainable, even if you have a higher income living in like California or New York. So they're targeting this and saying this would maybe really benefit working parents in states that I don't like, you know, more than it would benefit like lower income families in red states. And like that's just part of life, you know? Like some people live in more expensive places, they will benefit differently.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Also highlights how pernicious their basis of their political ideology is like, I can't stand helping out someone else. It has to only benefit me.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Right. I have a perceived enemy, a blue state liberal, and I will do nothing to help them, even if it would also help my constituents.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Also, red states take in way more federal dollars than blue states.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

They would absolutely benefit from a childcare subsidy, probably much more so than blue states. Another Heritage Foundation quote: New government requirements may radically alter childcare in the US, taking away family-based and faith-based options and discouraging stay-at-home parents.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

That's it. This is it.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

And that's it, right? That's it.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

This is the mother knows best doctrine. Like, they're essentially mother knows best. Get your government hand out of my childcare.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

They're like, no, no, no. We want stay-at-home moms. They say parents, but we all know the truth.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah, they don't advocate for stay-at-home dads. Come on, let's be so for real.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

They don't want childcare options that aren't based with the family or based in like churches. That's just fundamentally it. So the idea of subsidizing professionalized childcare centers is just an antithesis to like their whole idea. Mother knows best. Mothers should be raising their children. It's unnatural for there to be any other type of solution.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

And I just want to highlight how big of a departure this is from like quote unquote the way things used to be, which they love to, you know, cite all the time. You know, the saying it takes a village, that is honestly the natural state of childcare. Like the fact that their version of childcare is the nuclear family tells you that their conservative ideal is a very modern invention. Because the nuclear family wasn't a thing until I want to say industrial evolution, then maybe a little bit after. If they really want to be how things are, they should really advocate for a community-based childcare, but they don't.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

But that's not very waspy, is it, Humj? Isn't that like what immigrant communities do? We don't want that.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

God, I hate these people. Okay, continue.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

So that's the doctrine, right? They they nailed it for me. The thing that's holding us back, I think more some people kind of just believe this in a nebulous way, right? Like we're all, for some reason, we idealized the idea that only mothers can stay home with their children. And some people say that much more outrightly. But the doctrine here is just fundamentally sexism. It's not that it's sexist to be a stay-at-home mom. That is a free and perfectly great choice, but that choice is not made in a vacuum. The fact that women are more likely to earn less than their husbands, unless some households may look at that and say, it makes more sense for you to stay home because the man makes more. The fact that, you know, we don't have adequate parental leave to let women stay home with young babies and then go back to work. The fact that men are facing more social stigma if they like sacrifice their work to be stay-at-home dads, all of these things contribute to the choice environment. Without controlling for all those factors which are deeply ingrained in sexism, we are just recreating and building a fundamentally like wrong and patriarchal choice environment for ourselves. So like I think that's the important part. Like you have to look at the societal factors here. It doesn't make individual choices wrong, but it does affect them at a larger scale. And it's really important that we acknowledge and start working on those things.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

I think a core part of conservative ideology is their lack of critical thinking, that they view every decision in isolation of other decisions. And instead of thinking that we live under the effects of the system and therefore we need to fix the system, they're living in this quasi-dreamlike reality of I have full control over my entire life, and every choice is independent of every other choice. But you're right. At the core of this is sexism, right? It's mother knows best. And related to that is probably like I want to indoctrinate my kids in a particular way, and I can't stand potentially other people outside of the family unit being part of this process. Big yikes.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Yeah. So before I conclude my rant, I wanted to touch on what I'm seeing as like an extension of the historical roots I was talking about when it comes to what childcare policy we do have.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Wait, we have child care policies?

SPEAKER_02 33:14

We had a really great one, MJ. Tell me. When we passed the CARES Act during the COVID-19 pandemic, yes, I remember that. We greatly expanded the child tax credit. Now, the child tax credit is the one idea that conservatives have been willing to embrace that fundamentally offer some sort of support for families with children. The child tax credit essentially cash. Yes, essentially it's just cash. Republicans like it because a tax credit to them is like reducing your taxes, but it's not really fundamentally different than the government giving you money. It's just in framed in a way that conservatives can appreciate.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Yeah, they don't have the critical thinking to parse it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

So they like the child tax credit. Historically, before I'd say 2017, the childhood tax credit, um, someone can correct me if I'm wrong in the comments, was um$1,400 per child. For the CARES Act, Democrats largely greatly expanded it. So from 2021, the credit expanded to$3,600 per child under six and$3,000 per child between six and 17. That is a huge amount of money going to families with young children compared to what it was before. And that was a progressive option. So as family incomes increased, that child tax credit was reduced, but never less than the original. So if you made like over 120K as a household, you still received child tax credit, but it was not the super expanded one.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

With that expanded child tax credit, we saw a historic drop in child poverty in America. It was notable.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Record breaking.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Like on all fronts where children are affected, we saw huge improvements across the board. Just like that's winning policy, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:56

There is no other way to interpret this besides that this is just a good thing that happened.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

It was like, wow, we give people money for their children. Their children are in a way better place.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Yeah. Categorical slam dunk. And I cannot stress this enough. There is no alternative interpretation of this event.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

So in 2022, Democrats under the Biden administration were looking at the end of the CARES Act, the end of this childhood credit expansion, and they were pushing to make it permanent. Policy slam dunk, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Good. Slam dunk. There is no other way to interpret this. This is a win-win situation.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

This effort died. Republicans refused to support the expansion. The credit expansion ended. And then in 2022, we saw double-digit decreases in child welfare again. So like we dropped, we were doing really well. We went back to the baseline. Children suffered.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

The fact that we went back to baseline just goes to show you how good this thing is. Because if it stayed there and didn't go back to baseline, oh, maybe it's like, oh, maybe this is something else. No, it went straight back to baseline. Categorically, this is such a good thing. And the fact that it died is a massive indictment on the people who blocked it.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Yeah. I see this as like such a great improvement to the idea that female reformers led with women's pensions. It was more universal, it was more meaningful, it was easy for people to receive. Like it just made big improvements. The fact that Republicans killed this tax credit is really frustrating to me because the one thing that Republicans will land on, knowing that childcare subsidiation and childcare policy is really important to Americans across the political spectrum. Like it is a popular issue, at least in theory. But Republicans will often only ever talk about the child tax credit. Again, we talked about this. They love tax credits. It is still redistributing government funds, but to them, they can frame it in a way that they like. I would say even serious, quote unquote serious conservative policy think tanks, when they engage with this issue, they'll write about child tax credits. I read this really frustrating article from a conservative think tank talking about why they didn't support daycare subsidiation. It required lots of like cherry-picked, scary research about, you know, daycare being bad for children, being worse than children, being raised at home, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Of course.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

And they instead celebrated the child tax credit. They especially gave credit to Marco Rubio, who at the time was a senator and not secretary of state.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Yeah, simpler times.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

For supporting child tax credits. Not even a few years later, he was instrumental in killing the expansion. So it's just this hypocrisy, right? The one thing that Republicans will lean on as a potential solution, giving American families money to help raise their children, failed. And the only reason it failed, right? The only reason that this was actually different than the previous tax credit they supported, besides it just being more money, is that they one didn't want a Democratic administration to have a policy win. I would say that's a huge part of it. And two, they don't care if millions of children are lifted out of poverty. They don't care if children had noted educational, medical, and nutritional gains. Because this was a progressive tax credit and the families most affected were lower income. It just did not benefit them and their rich friends.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

I don't know if I talked about this in previous episodes, but I think it's worth bringing up this myth again. The notion that the core of the conservative base is poor people is fundamentally wrong. The media makes it seem like that because they are the most fun type of people to interview. Oh, look at this poor white person, like voting Republican, absolutely destroying their own lives. Like they're the most fun to interview because they give a lot of talking points, but the fundamental support for the conservative movement is wealthy people. And I think that is one of the reasons why they reject anything that sort of helps people of lower income.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

Right. Giving higher income families money if they have children benefits everybody, including higher income people. Subsidizing childcare would disproportionately support lower income families. It would be good for everybody, but it would disproportionately support lower income families, whereas the tax credit disproportionately supports higher income families. That is the fundamental difference. They're not interested in helping the people who need it the most. They're only interested in giving money to people that they personally know who can pay less in taxes.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

This is so frustrating because it's just such a categorical good thing that happened and they could not handle it.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

Now more children are in poverty because of their political ideology that this to me was so depressing as like a political progressive because so many people I think we're just hoping that the idea is hey, if we pass the progressive policy, right? We show people how good it can be. They'll be like, wow, I want more of that. And we did that and it failed. And it just really for me punctured my view of how things get presented in the media, or like if people know the reality of policies that get passed. It doesn't mean that everything Democrats do is good, but when good things happen, is there public support? Like, do we get rewarded for that? And honestly, it looks like no, which I don't really know what to do with that moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

I don't really know what to do with that either. Did that radicalize you when that happened?

SPEAKER_02 40:15

It did, because I felt like for the first time I was like, okay, it took so much political capital, but we did it. It like took a pandemic to deliver something like this.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

It took another massive event.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

But we did it and like gave everyone a taste of like just having more money if they have kids. Like just having more money. And too many voters were like, no. Whatever other bullshit on the news I'm watching is more important to me.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

And partially due to the electoral college system and just we don't really have like a popular election.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

It is true that like this happened enough before an election, right? Where senators and house members who voted against a bill that would greatly have benefited their own constituents may not have been punished for that. But it does mean like there's not enough willpower to punish politicians if they kill an extremely popular and successful policy. And that's tough for democracy.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Yeah, it's real tough trying to figure out what other commentary to add to this besides they suck so much.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

This doctrine is deeply poisonous. Conservatives who follow, you know, mother belong in the home, mother know best, only mothers can raise their children. Conservatives who follow this doctrine will say lots of things about what they want families to achieve. They want families to be able to keep kids at home, they want to make it more affordable, but none of that is true because when given the opportunity, they don't do it. They do not care about women's equality in the workforce, that is obvious. They do not care about outcomes for children. They do not wish to enable any social programs that could be perceived as welfare, and they won't even enable tax credits if they're too effective. And then elsewhere on the federal level, the HHS has been cutting programs that support and subsidize child's education and daycare. So all we do have is being gutted. And most recently, MJ, I think you're you're going to mention this, but in Minnesota, we have Somali run in particular, daycare centers being targeted with right-wing propaganda campaigns. So children are clearly not part of the picture here.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

They don't care. The question of like, what is this for? Because it clearly doesn't help anyone. You know, it doesn't even help the people who supposedly believe in this doctrine and voted for the politician that acted accordingly, supposedly. That's one of the motivations where we wanted to do this series, because we wanted to explore these very dangerous and pernicious doctrine that seems to benefit nobody, but just makes everything worse. To to do what? Like, I generally don't know what this achieves.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

Right. Like if you want to be a stay-at-home parent or a stay-at-home mother in particular, this policy, especially something like the child tax credit, is incredibly helpful for you doing so. And if you add further policies to subsidize childcare, that does not hurt your own goal in life. Other people having other options ahead of them does not take your options away. Yeah. And that's, you know, a huge fundamental flaw in our society is people cannot look at other people succeeding or having different paths available to them without taking that as a personal affront.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

God, that was depressing. So how does this doctrine, this mother knows best doctrine, affect health both at the individual level and the societal level? And I think this should be somewhat self-explanatory, but you know, for the sake of thoroughness, let's go through this. I have two focus for this. One is regarding childcare, like we've been discussing, and the other one regarding homeschooling. Let's do childcare first, as we've just been talking about this. At the individual level, this doctrine, Mother Knows Best, they're trying to push this idea that it is families' sole responsibility to raise their child and they shouldn't utilize any childcare or daycare. Why is that bad for us? I hate to break it to you, but the era of single income household is over. Capitalism has ruined that for most people, not that the single income model was good or anything.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

And it's not even that it was even particularly widespread. Like for most of history, the single income household was incredibly low. Limited. For most people, this has never been true.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yeah, this was only true for a very narrow period of time. Post-industrialization, pre-World War II, I want to say that band of history is when this is like kind of true, but it's not the default. And certainly capitalism in the last century has ruined this for most people. The previous solution of having a breadwinner and a trad wife in which the mom takes care of the kids because that's be so for real. It's not the dad. That model is no longer feasible for an increasing number of families, which is ironic because conservative policies of weakening labor among dozens of other policies is what led us to this. Like you would think that if they're so desperate to want a single-income nuclear family, they would pass policies like strengthening labor so that it is possible for one income to support an entire family. But no, they killed that too. So they made the problem.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

Yeah, like I am not personally pro focusing on policies that would encourage more women to stay out of the workforce. I think individual choice is a huge part of this, but I know so many women in my life, women I work with or friends with, who really were excited to go back to work after they had babies. Like they they did not want to be home with their baby. They wanted to apply their brains, they wanted to talk to adult humans and progress, and they find value in that. So I'm not personally pro a policy solution that is like making more single-income households just because that will affect women more so than men. But like the policies that would lead to that are good. So yeah, let's strengthen labor. Let's let's make that more possible. Um, like we can do more things.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

It's just so funny. They killed the outcome that they wanted, and now they're complaining about it. Conservative ideology is a piece of work. In addition, the era of the extended family living near each other is also over. Capitalism ruined that as well. It takes a village to raise a child, but 20th century conservative politics said no, we want nuclear families. We want families to move far away from home because that's where the industry is. It's all the way across the country and there's no jobs in your town. So their policy also killed the grandparents' helping out options. So who are you complaining to? Like you've made this happen. You made this untenable childcare situation happen, and you're not only unwilling to address that this is a result of your policy decision, but also unwilling to offer any solutions to this policy failure from the last like 60 years. Anyway, so this is a new reality of ours. There are only two types of families that would not need childcare of some form. The first type are a wealthy family. One parent, the mom, stays at home to care for the kids while the other makes money. If you have money, a lot of problems solve itself. That's one type of family that wouldn't need childcare. The second type of family that wouldn't need childcare is a negligent family. Right. For people who simply do not care.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Just chain your kid up, go to work.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Yeah. All good. Everyone else, though, needs some form of childcare because they care about their child. And also, this is not even counting like single parent families. If you're like divorced or widowed, right? We're not even including them into the discussion.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Yeah. Conservatives have no solutions for them. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

The majority of people need some of our childcare. As a society, we should help these parents because if we don't, they will struggle. This is essentially manufactured poverty. Between the child being born in age six, first grade, these parents are on their own to figure out what to do. Whatever that solution is, it will cost a lot of money, whether that's a nanny, daycare.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Or just finding like some neighbor who can pander the table who doesn't have license. Like sure. These are solutions that that happen, and they're not necessarily all bad, but they're not guaranteed, right? They're not necessarily safe, they're always going to be the best quality. It's just you gotta do what you gotta do.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

You have to scrap together things, and all of these cost money and time. So something has to give. Is this child care money coming out of the rent budget? Is it perhaps coming out of the grocery budget? This manufactured poverty is not healthy because poverty is not healthy. At the most direct level, when you are financially unstable, your choice of food is different. Food insecurity affects almost 14 million children in the US that we know of, and 2 million of those children are children under three. It's hard to be healthy when you don't have money to eat. This manufactured poverty by not supporting childcare, you're essentially sending people who otherwise would not be in poverty into poverty, which is making such a situation worse for everyone. And that's not good for health, both for the parents and the child. And all this manufactured poverty, for what? What is the rationale? Like, what is this doctrine trying to do?

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Well, you simply have to work harder.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

I guess. Is that their rationale?

SPEAKER_02 48:30

You just have to find a better job.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

You just have to marry a richer man.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

Right. You have to marry a rich man, become a Christian wife.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

Oh god.

SPEAKER_02 48:36

They'll take care of you. Don't even worry. The solutions are really simplistic because Republicans, when I was reading like all these awful conservative policy papers, they always come back to the idea that that subsidiation, that welfare is reducing people's need or desire to work, which is so obviously not true. None of these solutions make it possible for like a single mother to stop working. They just make her life easier and they make a child's welfare more attainable.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

I think we talked about this in the off-grid episode, but like the amount of labor that we put into our hobbies for no pay is astounding and should disprove any argument that people don't work unless it's for money. Just a wrong assumption. So that's childcare. We should have childcare because if we don't have childcare solutions, then you essentially are manufacturing poverty, which is bad. The second focus of this section is the natural extension of mother knows best. The more extreme version of this mother knows best doctrine is the belief that not just childcare is unnecessary, but education in general is unnecessary. It's dangerous. Cue the moral panic music. And we're gonna talk about homeschooling. Holly, I need you to lock it because this stuff is wild. Probably not gonna feel good about this.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

No, it's okay. I'm ready to get angry again.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

Let's talk about homeschooling. To be clear, homeschooling as a concept is not the issue. There are definitely a correct way to do homeschooling that can reasonably replace conventional schooling. It takes a lot of effort. It requires signing up for an accredited, structured curriculum with benchmarks, milestones, and accountability. It requires parents to make the effort to sign their child up for extracurricular activities and socializing opportunities to make sure that that side of their child's development isn't lacking. It also requires a lot of discipline from both the parents and the child to see the education process through. Proper homeschooling demands learning from both the parents and the child because the parents need to learn how to be an educator. It's not just like a plop your kid down in front of a computer and turn it on, sort of deal. It's not supposed to be. It's not supposed to be. There are many legitimate reasons why someone may want to homeschool their kids. Let's bounce a few. Severe bullying is one legitimate reason. Like for whatever reason, the kids at your school sucks and you just can't have your kid in that environment. Completely understandable. If you have severe bullying issues, that may be a reason to homeschool your kids. If you have a unique learning challenge and your school is not funded enough to help your kid with that learning disability, maybe you want to homeschool your kids.

SPEAKER_02 51:03

Policy failures on policy failures, but yes.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Yeah, policy failures. There are other things. If you travel a lot, maybe your family needs to move a lot, and maybe that homeschooling might be better. If you are a child actor, a lot of child actors are homeschooled for obvious reasons. It'd be kind of annoying to go to school with like a literal child star. I feel like that would be annoying to me.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

And they're doing project-based work, they're working like weird hours. A lot of them have to have some sort of like tutoring.

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Yeah. So homeschooling the premise is not the problem. The problem is that many parents who choose homeschooling don't do that. And there aren't many avenues that this country has to make them homeschool properly. In the United States, there are scant regulations regarding homeschooling curriculum. This was the result of decades of lobbying by the conservatives to keep regulators out of homeschooling. Unsurprisingly, pre-COVID, more than half of all homeschooling parents cites religious education as one of the reasons for homeschooling their child. Many states, almost half, do not require homeschoolers to be evaluated. And some states lack even intervention laws. Like if a student is found to be failing, some states said, well, then educators need to intervene, pull this student out of homeschool. A lot of states don't even have that. So if the student is failing, the states are like, we can't do anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

Mother knows best. Our hands are tied.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Many states allow parents to proctor their child's tests at home if they even test at all. In 40 states, there is no requirement on how much education the parents need to be able to homeschool their kids. Not even a high school diploma. Like, no regulations on this at all. Some states don't even require the parents to register somewhere that they are homeschooling their children. So there is so little regulation on homeschooling. And you can see the problem with this. Many parents, when they say they're homeschooling their kids, what they really mean is their kids are not in school.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Because there's no definition of homeschooling. So you could just pull your kids out of school and that's homeschooling.

SPEAKER_02 53:03

Are they having a structured day-to-day curriculum? Or even if it's unstructured, are they hitting learning targets? Do you have a plan for their education? We don't really have enough data to know the extent to which homeschooling is successful because of the lack of regulation. But yes, for some children, we will societally be failing them.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

And just a side note, when I did research into homeschooling, I fell down a rabbit hole of homeschooling propaganda that I don't have time to get into. But Holly, it's wild the amount of propaganda that they generate.

SPEAKER_02 53:34

Isn't it so fun to spend time on conservative think tank websites and Instagram? Yeah. I'm glad you're finally seeing the light with me, MJ.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

I saw this webpage where they're like, here are the benefits of homeschooling and take a stab at what is their number one point. I see this repeated across all homeschooling advocacy website. What is their number one point?

SPEAKER_02 53:55

No gay stuff.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

No, that's actually not it because they know that kind of doesn't fly. But the tones are there. What do you think is the number one thing that this is the benefit of homeschooling and is something that they cite all the time?

SPEAKER_02 54:05

Do you control the curriculum?

SPEAKER_00 54:06

No, not even that. It's up there.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

Okay, I'm really floundering here.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

They cite that homeschooled kids have higher test scores.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

Now, a lot of their scores are proctored by their parents at home. Okay. Let's put two and two together.

SPEAKER_02 54:18

Yeah. Again, just complete lack of regulation. Our data is not going to be standardized.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

Also, there's a class component to this that I have to point out. Proper homeschooling requires a lot of parental involvement. Homeschooling is not plopping your child in front of a computer, or it shouldn't be. Therefore, what type of family has the flexibility for a parent to properly homeschool their child?

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Stay-at-home parents.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

And if you can afford to be a stay-at-home parent in today's economy, what kind of family are you?

SPEAKER_02 54:47

Wealthy.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

Yeah. So they cite higher tests as their, oh, this is why homeschooling is better. They have better academic outcomes. That data is so unreliable. And if you look at SAT and ACT test scores, it turns out to be a wash. And there are some data, again, a lot of data is unreliable. A lot of data suggests that they are less likely to go to college. They are less likely to perform well later in college if they do go to college and they're more likely to take lower wage jobs, right? Again, the data is scant, so we can't make any definitive argument of for whether homeschooling is good or bad. What we do know is that there is a wide variation. There are people who homeschool their kids, and the kids are very successful because they do it properly. But that is not a solution. The solution cannot be we will just rely on families to be responsible. That cannot be a policy solution. We don't rely on this for other aspects of society. We don't say you don't need seatbelts. We will just rely on people to drive slow, right? That's just not a solution that we can have.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

We can't make laws assuming the best case scenario for every situation. It's gonna create fundamental failures.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Yeah, we don't need vaccines. The sick people will just stay home like responsible people. You can't run society like this. And the lack of regulation in the homeschooling space is incredibly harmful. Have you read educated Bartara Westover?

SPEAKER_02 56:03

I have. I always think about that when thinking about homeschooling.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Let me tell you, she's not the only one. She is just talented enough to write a memoir, but there are many kids that have been through what she's been through. Why is this bad? On the more direct level, the lack of oversight and regulation means cases of child abuse is unlikely to be discovered. Schools have mandatory reporters. Teachers, I believe, are mandatory reporters. At very least, the nurses and the counselors are mandatory reporters. You don't have that when you're homeschooling because there's no one else there. From the last episode, we already discussed how many cases of abuse are perpetrated by the child's family member or guardian. Imagine if you don't go to school and you wake up and it's your parents and you go to sleep and it's still your parents. Like for a lot of families, unfortunately, school is actually like a safe space for the child because the family is kind of unstable, unfortunately. More cases of abuse are probably covered up. Other countries figured this out. Other countries figured out that it needs to be an accreditor curriculum and there needs to be like routine checks on the child's well-being. We don't have this in the States. Homeschooling is like a wild west. They could do whatever they want, and that's bad. Slight tangent. Many types of abuse do not look like the conventional image of abuse. For example, I would argue not teaching your child how to read is a form of abuse.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

Hot take.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

That's my humble opinion. Not letting your child leave the house, I would say, is a form of abuse. A lot of people think abuse, they think sexual abuse, they think physical abuse, but there are many ways that abuse can take place of depriving your child, and we need to recognize that. We don't have any data on what type of sex ed these homeschoolers are giving their child, but given the overwhelming conservative base of the homeschooling lobby, my guess is that sex ed is poor. And that is a public health concern for sure. What do you think sex ed looks like in a homeschool environment?

SPEAKER_02 57:46

I don't want to think about it. I mean, best case scenario, I guess they just don't have any. Not that that's a good public health outcome, but I just I wouldn't want sex ed with a conservative homeschooling parent, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 57:57

Yeah, the academic outcome of these homeschooled children are highly variable. Some students have poorer academic performances. Um, some students have pretty good academic performances. We don't know. What we do know is that there is zero credible evidence that homeschooling on average produce better outcomes than conventional schooling. And also, homeschooling is a threat to public health because there are no vaccination requirements for homeschoolers. That's actually another reason why people pull kids out of school because they don't want to vaccinate their kids.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

Right. Parents in many states can avoid vaccination requirements, but it's a hoop to jump through that is simply not there with this homeschooling option. The idea that is so fervently held in our society that women belong in the home, that there is a natural rightness to the idea of women being home with her children. And I'm not just talking about the first couple of months of a child's birth, which I would agree with, but for years of their lives at the cost of women being in the workforce, is a deeply held and I would say deeply toxic belief that has held us back from achieving very attainable policy goals that would improve the lives of millions of Americans, regardless of what they personally need for their childcare and for their work. And honestly, in the long run, would benefit all of Americans, regardless of whether they themselves want to have children.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 59:19

It's incredibly frustrating to talk about because this is something that's popular, supporting kids, making things affordable for families, and it's something that's been out of our reach for a century. So diving into this topic has been really interesting to me. I love this period of history. I always have found it really interesting. I hate reading about how much progress we haven't made and how close we've almost come so many times. But I think it's really important that we both accept and celebrate and allow people to pursue the family structure that makes the most sense for them while improving the society we live in. I think this doctrine is really damaging. I think it's hurting people even if they don't realize it. We have come so close to establishing childcare policy so many times in recent years, in decades past. I hope one of these days it happens. That is a future I cannot really envision at this point in time, but we can hold out hope. And do I have a microgood?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

I don't I don't have a microgood.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

Not really. Daycare in particular, we have mentioned this, but I want everyone to be aware of the attack, the fraudulent attack on daycare happening in Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

That yeah, we didn't even get into that. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:33

Right. People are aware that's happening. Um, it's anti-immigration, it's xenophobic in intention. The reason that these daycares are being targeted is because they're run by Somali immigrants. It has played a huge part in why Minneapolis in particular is under fire from ICE and is under siege. But all of these myths about daycare, these myths about how fundamentally irresponsible it is for children not to be home with their families, is propaganda and it is wrong. And I think unraveling that is really important for us to be able to move forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

And dare I say this doctrine of mother knows best, it degrades the moral fabrics of society because it's just keeps promoting isolationism. Don't let your child outside, like you know everything that your child needs to know, which is so categorically untrue. It is physically impossible for you to know everything that your child needs to know. And the arrogance needed and the conceitedness needed to fully believe that is damaging to the child and society as a whole. Yeah, maybe consider that you don't know best. You know, maybe there are things that you don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

Mother does not know best. Mother has growth opportunities as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Yeah. Mother tries her best, but mother certainly does not know best.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:42

Father needs to pick up the pace and start contributing. Well, there's that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

Those are our two episodes on the conservative parental ideologies and how messed up that they are, and how they keep holding us back from having good things, and how they generally make everything worse. Bye. Bye.