Patrick T. Brown

Policymakers should understand that the drug-overdose crisis is a crisis of single men.

While the desirability of helping youth achieve their full potential is self-evident, even the best of intentions do not guarantee positive outcomes.

The limits of the technocratic approach to improving the lives of poor or working-class children have become apparent.

“Build Back Better” was not a unified approach to expanding parents’ choices.

If lawmakers want to expand public funding of child care or other safety-net expansions, they should argue for it on its merits, not as a response to the pandemic’s impact on the labor market.

Conservative and progressive lawmakers and activists will always disagree about whether abortion should be legal. They can find common ground, however, in making abortion less seemingly necessary for moms in economic distress.

The Build Back Better child-care plan would relegate religious providers to the margins.

Policymakers can improve options for parents without forgiving student debt.

The pressure campaigns on religious freedom and voting bills would look like child’s play if a state moved to enact restrictions potentially enabled by Dobbs. Social conservatives need to prepare a counteroffensive.

With D.C. consumed with a social spending bill that could dramatically reshape life for America’s families, Virginia could offer an example of authentically pro-family policy from early childhood to high school.

Borrowing a family policy prescription from Helsinki or Budapest is bound to disappoint. A distinctly American family policy platform must be seen as expanding choice, not constraining it, and working with our national character, not trying to reshape it, all while understanding family as the essential institution in society, one that stakes an unavoidable claim on our public resources.

The family is the fundamental unit of society, and has a claim on our resources. Here are five important steps policymakers could take to put that philosophy into practice.