5/6 “Part 3 - POLICY SOLUTIONS”
The studies reviewed in Part 2 offer evidence of the positive benefits of secure attachment, and the negative long-term impact of non-maternal care; explore the possible connection between insecure attachment and the rise of anxiety, self-harm, addiction, and depression among America’s youth; and reveal that most parents want to have one stay-at home parent involved in raising of their children (at least in the early years). Also noted were the factors contributing to the shrinking of “the village” that supports parents, and mothers, in their roles.
The recent emphasis in public policy has been on child care and expanding provision of more day care. America has a substantial child care shortage, especially after the pandemic, with more than half of U.S. residents in areas where there are 3 children under the age of 5 for every licensed child care space, and where infant care in 2021 was more expensive in 33 states and Washington D.C. than college. The current child care market was valued at $60.4 billion in 2022 and anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.18 percent from 2023 to 2030, in part driven by the growth of single-parent families. Additionally, expanding the K-12 public school system with a universal pre-K program for three- and four-year-olds is estimated to cost about $351 billion over 10 years, including the cost of constructing new facilities.
Yet this money could perhaps be better spent and address the actual challenge at hand. If young people self-harm to “regulate their emotions”, perhaps we need to promote secure attachment in the early years as the appropriate developmental stage in which self-regulation and self-soothing are established. If students and young adults cannot handle stress, perhaps we should promote secure attachment in the early years when an individual’s stress responses are developed. If American youth are seeing a rise in depression and anxiety, we need to ask whether this correlates to a rise in non-maternal care.
FURTHER RESEARCH
1. Attachment theory and public policy
Attachment theory and the early years needs more vigorous research expressly focused on developing appropriate public policy in light of findings. Such research should accept that, as matters stand, there are substantial economic, political and cultural sources of resistance to adopting policy that promotes secure attachment. Yet the findings of attachment theory should not be dismissed simply because they are an inconvenient truth.
2. Paid family leave and health insurance costs
One of the potential blocks to employer-paid paid family leave may be existing health insurance costs. Health insurance is expensive to both employees and employers. Health insurance premiums and deductibles combined have the potential to cost 10 percent or more of workers’ earnings in 37 states. Employer sponsored insurance premiums have risen above the rate of inflation and outstripped wage growth, leaving 40 percent of adults covered reporting difficulty in affording care, prescriptions, or premiums. The costs are higher for those on low incomes and for smaller firms. Further, these costs do not yet reflect current inflation. A rise in healthcare costs that cuts into both family budgets and those of small businesses, could decrease an appetite among private employers, and even their employees, in the introduction of paid family leave policies.
Further research is needed to explore whether the costs of health insurance to employers and employees is a choke point in the implementation of employer-based paid family leave or maternity leave policies that may further assist in attachment.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
The Village – urgent need to reform the context in which we build family
An incoming administration must take seriously the decline in social capital in America today. This long-term decline has a serious impact not only on the quality of life for everyday Americans but, as reported in A Civil Society, the governability of the country itself. The decline of social capital has shrunk the voluntary, informal networks of relationships that assist parents, and in particular mothers, in the raising of their children. Reversing these declines should be a priority, not least if we wish to value the role of families and mothers in America, in order to raise the next generation of securely attached individuals.
Too much of current policy debate is about extending the role of the K-12 system and expanding the role of government to support child care, not parents. In fact, much of the noise appears to be an attempt to usurp the role of parents altogether. The federal deficit, already at historic highs with a debt to GDP ratio of 124 percent in 2022, would be swamped if it attempted to replace the village that supports a mother and parents—and totally overwhelmed by any attempts to replace parents themselves.
What must be recognized is that America is already a hostile environment for the raising of children. It is one of the more dangerous places in the developed world to give birth, despite being one of the most expensive places to do so. And it has a federal funding approach that is the least generous among wealthy countries.
A note on faith-based groups
One of the features that must distinguish social capital creation under a new administration is a focus on true diversity: allowing faith-based groups and civil society to have a greater role in the delivery of public services. Especially as it relates to the raising of children, in support roles to mothers and families.
Faith groups, and attendance at houses of worship, builds social capital. The inclusion of faith groups in the provision mix of, for example, affordable pre-school care, helps to build social capital. As Brad Wilcox, reviewing Robert Putnam’s Our Kids writes for The Wall Street Journal, “churchgoing is associated with better performance in school, less drinking and drug use, and less delinquency. The class divide in institutional access [to houses of worship] translates into dramatically different chances that children will flourish later in life.” Attendance at a publicly funded faith-based service may lead to a few more families attending a House of Worship in their free time. This is a personal choice—but as one that builds social capital, is in turn good for the country. The separation of church and state is not a requirement for public funds to only support secular programs.
Policy Recommendation 1: Family hubs
Families have a variety of social capital accumulated: some with extensive networks, others with fewer. For those families with low social capital it is worth remembering that relationships are role-modelled. To facilitate secure attachment requires not just time to bond with a child and financial security to do it, but also some investment on how to parent. This is not simply a curriculum; relationships are role-modelled, learned by experience and example. Family hubs could be established, a local center, perhaps run by a local church or non-profit as these are more informal and with a premium on relationship. Such family hubs could provide mom’s groups, prenatal classes, parenting classes, family therapy, youth mentoring, as well as perhaps other services such as food banks, budgeting classes, cooking classes—practical information that assists parents who have limited relationship resources to learn from. Lawmakers should review the existing provision of such family supports, and see how a variety of providers could work to better support the enriching of social capital for those families who lack it.
Policy Recommendation 2: Attachment theory taught in prenatal classes, public health campaign
A public health approach to attachment would ensure that a wide-spread understanding of attachment theory was more common place. Hospitals, family practices and family hubs could teach attachment theory as part of their prenatal classes. This would better inform parents as they make choices about how to approach the early years. Also, a wider understanding of attachment theory should help to educate the wider labor market on the importance of attachment, and create a more compelling climate for employers to accommodate attachment through the voluntary implementation of paid family leave. High school, college curriculum, popular culture output—such as streaming shows—and successful public education campaigns, like that to reduce CFC-use to protect the ozone layer, could all be used to inform the public of the tenets of attachment theory and its benefits.
Policy recommendation 3: Social and emotional learning (SEL)
Social and emotional learning (SEL) within schools has a role to play if it helps to promote “nurture” approaches to the raising of children based on attachment theory principles. There are legitimate concerns that SEL in public school curriculum is used by teachers to move beyond an appropriate scope for the classroom. SEL should support parent leadership at home. Lawmakers should consider ways to ensure SEL is used to affirm the leadership role of parents.
Policy recommendation 4: Increase financial support to young families
Secure attachment requires the availability of a mother for long periods of time. A baby, after all, “cannot develop into an emotionally healthy, interdependent person without being intensely dependent first.” In Being There Erica Komisar proposes an ideal as “a policy of six months’ leave at full pay, six months’ leave at partial pay, and the ability to have a flexible work schedule for the next two years.” Certainly such a transition would take the United States from being an international outlier where, at present, there is no maternity support, to being a world leader in providing the necessary space to allow for secure attachment. While such a goal hasn’t been achieved anywhere, there is plenty of room in the United States to move in that direction. The following policies could help to move the United States to becoming a global leader in policy aimed at optimizing the climate for secure attachment.
4a) Super Child Tax Credit (SCTC)
Politicians may be reluctant to provide mandatory paid family leave. The current child tax credit is $2,000 a year per child. But this is quite an insignificant sum in both a family’s budget but also by international standards. Hungary provides a range of benefits to support families, including a child care allowance that is 70 percent of a mother or father’s salary or 140 percent of the minimum wage. A significant SCTC could provide meaningful financial support to allow a mother to spend time with her child in the early years.
4b) Paid family leave
As discussed in our other reports, paid family leave, whether voluntary or mandatory, could ensure that particularly those on low- and low-medium incomes are not financially ruined by becoming parents, and to allow for longer periods of leave that promote secure attachment.
From international outlier to global leader—long-term possibilities
Attachment theory may seem implausible to accommodate in practice. Yet over the long term it may be possible to orient the American economy and society toward supporting secure attachment.
The world of employment is changing rapidly. People are not employed by the same employer for decades. Retirement age at 65 is no longer sustainable when 1 in 3 adults will live to 100. As explored in a previous paper “Social Capital Works,” automation is anticipated to leave no job role untouched—and to be a potential source of tax or social security revenue.
Automation is also anticipated to add a premium on emotional intelligence, therefore secure attachment would become an even more valuable asset in the labor market. Flexibility in career across the life course could allow for a greater job-security, not less. If maternity periods are seen as part of a wider socially and economically accepted reality of a work-life balance, maternal and paternal leave may be less stigmatized. In a context of life-long learning, retraining, upskilling, and career breaks as people anticipate working longer into a healthier older age, paid family leave may be seen as a responsible life choice rewarded by a more flexible, forward-thinking society.
What is critical is that secure attachment should be an asset available for all to develop. At present, the possibility of secure attachment is only possible for those who are independently wealthy, willing to make substantial income sacrifice (perhaps to the detriment of their overall upward social mobility), or those in high-skilled, high-income jobs.
“The Early Years - Youth Investment”
Chris Bullivant
June 2023
Building social capital starts with 0-3s, and that first attachment with mom.
