No. 23
June 8, 1999
By Joanne Elachi*

A recently released Public Agenda survey, Kids These Days ‘99: What Americans Really Think About the Next Generation, reveals that Americans are no longer looking to government to help kids. Instead they want a return to parental responsibility and accountability. Yet our ever-expanding government seems more determined than ever to implement broad, one-size-fits-all policies that are often based on symbolic value rather than a true representation of needs. The latest buzzword is "children."

Policies purported to be "for the children" slither past an otherwise deliberate Congress because no politician, or individual voter for that matter, wants to be labeled as against children. Not a week goes by without several new federal initiatives that seek to solve some alleged crises affecting the nation’s children. Recent proposals include a measure to make guns less accessible to minors and to allow state use of unemployment funds to provide paid leave to new parents. Others have proposed a requirement that children be vaccinated for chicken pox before entering day care or elementary school, and a mandate for a federal investigation of how the entertainment industry markets violence to kids.

The ongoing debate over governmental regulation and provision of child care has consumed serious time and tax dollars in an attempt to assuage an imaginary crisis. Although the Clintons are convinced that a "child-care crisis" has developed, according to the National Child Care Survey, 96% of American parents are satisfied with their child-care arrangements.

A "protect-the-children" label was patched on to the gun-control debate after the Littleton tragedy. It escaped notice that two of the guns used were acquired legally and could still have been bought legally under the new proposed legislation. The third gun was illegally purchased under already existing laws. Criminals who intend to use weapons will not be dissuaded by a few additional laws, but when it comes to protecting children that reality is ignored.

There is a crisis brewing that involves our children, but it is not to be solved by a new law or government-sponsored program. It is a crisis of disconnection, kids from their families and families from their government. Step by step, parents have relinquished their authority over the education, counseling, and even feeding of their children to a government that has expanded to fill that role. Public schools are no longer accountable to parents, and often act in disregard of parental rights.

Government has come to see itself as an equal or even primary partner in the upbringing and protection of children. Recent policies seem to be based on the assumption that parents are the least likely contributors to their child’s well-being.

For example, the Healthy Families America (HFA) initiative recruits community volunteers who screen the hospital records of women giving birth who may be "at risk" for potentially abusing their unborn children. According to the risk rating, these unlicensed caseworkers propose weekly visits to the mother’s home to further evaluate the family while offering parenting training and recommendations for participation in other social-service programs. Mothers who refuse the service risk being reported to their state or county Department of Children’s Services.

Aside from a six-week training course, these caseworkers have little relevant education. Yet, they are given the authority to determine the best parenting practices and whether parents have the right to independently raise their child. Often they can determine whether or not parents have the right to raise their child at all.

Not only is the HFA program invasive, it also fails to accomplish its stated goal: to prevent child abuse. A recent study by the Physician’s Resource Council stated that "no well-constructed control-group study of an HFA program has shown clear success in reducing child abuse rates or measures of child abuse potential." Yet 320 HFA programs in 42 states consumed 90 million federal dollars in 1997.

The federal government currently operates more than 150 programs specifically for children, at a cost of $50 billion per year. Yet, according to the Public Agenda survey, three-fourths of Americans do not believe that there should be more government programs to support kids. They instead support solutions closer to home, through community and home involvement. More than nine out of ten support more after-school programs and activities in community centers, involvement with volunteer organizations like the Boy Scouts and the YMCA, and flexible working schedules so that parents have more time to spend with their kids.

Numerous polls show that the majority of parents would like to spend more time with their children, but can’t afford to do so. Federal, state, and local taxes consume nearly 40 percent of a family’s income, leaving both parents little choice but to work full time. Lower taxes, and therefore more take-home pay, would allow parents to spend more time with their families, provide better care for their children, and opt out of programs that replace them under the guise of assisting them.

Instead of funneling more money into unproven and impersonal programs, tax cuts would allow individual solutions to individual problems. We must make a stand for parental choice and parental rights, and get Big Brother out of the nursery and the schoolyard.

*Joanna Elachi is a research assistant for the California-based Pacific Research Institute’s Center for Enterprise and Opportunity.

For additional information, contact Naomi Lopez at (415) 989-0833.