The Care Agenda and America's Families

There are all types of families raising children today, and they have different values, faiths, economic resources, and very structures, as the description of four families above shows. Parents are bound by their love of their children, their commitment to one another, and their desire to ensure a good future for their children. Parents place this even above their own well-being and success.

While the term “pro-family” often is used as a buzzword for policies to promote and protect only a particular family type of family (like the first family described), the care agenda supports all families raising children. It doesn’t pit one family against another family but provides support to all families in their most important role of raising the next generation.

Key to our nation’s success is ensuring that children, whatever their family composition and resources, have the support they need to realize their potential. When families struggle – and that can be in managing household budgets, responding to a family members’ special health condition, or balancing breadwinning and caregiving roles. The care agenda provides supports, without intruding upon family values and faiths, in doing so.

Particularly in these polarized political times, the first step in resolving differences often is in fidning commong ground. For the vast majority of voters, these elements in the care agenda are precisely ones that have strong support and are recognized as strengthening families.

In many respects, the terms “pro-family” and “parents matter” have been appropriated for a particular political agenda to impose certain “family values” as ones that government should prioritize and protect. Some “pro-family” adherents even use rhetoric that schools and public education are indoctrinating their students and that teaching the country’s full history devalues the people who built the country and can make children ashamed of who they are. They see immigrants as threats to the American way of life and other than heterosexuality as deviant. They seek to restrict government help to and services to children to families that don’t adhere to their definition of American values. 

While this actually represents a small minority view among parents and voters overall, parents and voters definitely want elected officials and government to be pro-family and recognize how much parents matter and that government should not intrude on parents’ rights and responsibilities to raise their children in their faith and with their values. This can be used and then lead to the culture wars in current politics that divides us. The care agenda itself, when presented as a “pro-family” or “valuing families” agenda, can help to break down these divisions and find common ground.

It also can pave the way for meeting other child agendas that have become political battleground, most notably public education and child health care coverage, which are not specifically a part of the care agenda but are part of how we care for children.

Most families also want robust, well-financed public education where their children can learn and grow and develop with their peers and be exposed to a diversity of experiences and ideas and where they are included and valued, whatever their appearance or ability. While some families may prefer other educational arrangements that stress their own faith, most families believe these must not come at the expense of a public education system.

  Polls consistently show that voters want candidates to speak more about what they will do to support children and make investments in their future. There is a disconnect, however, between what voters want in a general sense and what candidates and their consultants emphasize in campaigns, which are usually around high-visibility, hot button issues, and not more deliberative dialogues on those requiring more complex responses.

While both candidates and parties care about children and families, that does not mean they have the same positions on what government should do. While there is broad voter support for all the elements of the care agenda across political affiliations, that does not mean that candidates do not different in their views.

Congressional candidate websites often include an “issues” or “priorities” or “policy” section that present the candidate’s positions. Both Republican and Democratic candidate websites often include sections on veterans, seniors, economic development, education, health care, foreign policy, immigration, and inflation – all important issues and constituencies. 

Only a handful of websites, however, currently have “issues’ or “priorities’ or “policy” sections that speak to the care agenda or to other ways candidates propose to support families in raising their children.

One action we all can take is to ask our candidates what their views are on the care agenda and to include in their issue or position statements ones that speak directly to the care, child, and family agenda they will promote.