Nothing Beautiful Survives the Culture War
Updated at 12:06 p.m. ET on May 9, 2022.
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 do not: More kids live in relative poverty; more ; more grade schoolers routinely . And American parents—particularly American mothers—suffer too, in ways our international counterparts do not: Our are much higher; our options for ; our resources for support are . Our birth rate is as it’s ever been, and a rising share of childless young adults in the United States now report that they to have children.
