Post Roe, some in GOP wage uphill battle to offer families more support

Jeff Stein, Washington Post, August 7, 2022

In the early 2010s, Abby McCloskey was one of only two female economists on her team at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most influential think tanks on the right. Her mostly older, mostly male colleagues were focused on the policy issues that have dominated GOP circles since before the Reagan revolution: tax cuts, regulatory reform, reducing government spending.

But McCloskey pored over data showing that mothers in the United States earn less after childbirth than fathers do, and she thought it revealed a problem in need of a government response.

The vast majority of conservative scholarship about paid-leave programs then argued they were unnecessary. Convulsed by the tea party movement, Republican lawmakers were focused on cutting, not creating, government programs for the poor. And there were no GOP-backed bills to create paid leave or child-care benefits.

The lack of progress has been bitterly disappointing to conservatives like McCloskey, who argues that Republicans should seize the opportunity to respond to the seismic shift wrought by Dobbs.

“If not now, with this huge change in what it means to be pregnant in this country,” she said, “then when?”

The GOP Failed Millennial Moms Like Me. But It Needs Us Now More Than Ever.

Abby McCloskey, July 15, 2022, Politico Magazine

“With these deep flaws in both parties, is it any wonder that women are exhausted by politics in general?”

Abby McCloskey, founder of McCloskey Policy LLC

“I’m not the only millennial woman to feel out of step with the GOP. According to Pew Research polling in 2018, among millennial women, 70 percent are or lean Democrat, relative to 23 percent who lean or are Republican. This gap is huge relative to that of millennial men, who split 49 percent Democrat to 41 percent Republican, and dwarfs the partisanship of other generations of women. Importantly, this is not a baked-in gender gap: The partisan gap among millennial women has nearly tripled in the last two decades.

I’m an economic analyst, not a pollster. But reasons given for the general flight of women from the GOP abound. There are few Republican women in leadership — in Congress, think tanks or policy campaigns — relative to that of Democrats, but that’s been the case for some time. The tone and the crassness of many in the party’s leadership — “Legitimate rape”; “grab ‘em by the p----”; “blood coming out of her wherever” — has ticked up. The hardline party stance on immigration or health care or gun rights, which women voters tend to care about more than men, have been in the spotlight. Then there’s the fact that millennials came of age during 9/11 and the Great Recession and now Covid-19, and so might be more inclined to recognize the world is fragile and that government in theory could help.

But I can’t help but think that the GOP’s yawning gap among millennial women in particular has to do with their becoming mothers. The millennial generation is typically defined as being born between 1981 and 1996, meaning that these women are now in their mid-20s to 40 — prime years for starting families.”

Now Is the Time for the Pro-Life Movement to Return to its Roots

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, June 29, 2022

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade left an unsettled feeling even in many conservative corners of the country. Relief, completion, and yet, uncertainty. Like we might be at the beginning of something, not at the end. And one of the reasons I think that it feels precarious, even for a pro-life woman like myself, is that a lot of the energy around overturning Roe has turned punitive for vulnerable women and their children.A movement grounded in love and life has bedfellows with a more malevolent crew: wielding abortion access as yet another tool of polarization and division and hate, turning fellow citizens into bounty hunters for illegal abortions, chasing down the “morning-after” pill, calling out abortion tourism and woke corporations in the primetime lineup.”

Conservatives Must Urgently Embrace a Whole-Life Approach

Abby McCloskey, Politico, June 25, 2022

“I’ll go out on a limb. I don’t think that the Supreme Court decision will reduce the fever pitch around abortion, given the extreme policies that states likely will enact on both sides. Those who see a fetus as a baby with unalienable rights are unlikely to ignore a neighboring state’s widespread abortion access, even if their own state has strict limitations. Nor will those who see abortion access as essential for gender equity and advancement ignore states restricting abortion access at any gestation or without any exceptions, such as those for rape.

But we can reduce the fear and instability and penalties of parenthood. We’ve all seen the surveys, the polling, the child poverty statistics. The fear and cost and insecurity of having a child are visceral right now. Post-Roe children will be born into more difficult circumstances than most. According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of abortions are performed for women living below the poverty line as of 2014 — up from 30 percent in 1987 — meaning that these families who would previously be weighing whether to have an abortion will need help. Red states like mine, Texas — where the strictest abortion restrictions likely will be — are the least likely to have programs that support families such as paid family leave. That’s a bad combination.

Conservatives must urgently embrace a whole-life approach. A party that prides itself on being pro-life and pro-family should be leading the charge to ensure that all infants can spend their first months of life with their parents. There are plenty of economic reasons for this, but for pro-lifers, the moral extension to protect the helpless is essential. Conservatives should embrace childcare support, home visitation services and other policies that help both children and parents to thrive. Conservatives should be on the cutting edge of family planning to ensure that people are ready to start their families when the time is right and have access to the best medical care when they do. It’s not just government; it’s civil society too. Pregnancy clinics and churches who no longer need to steer patients away from abortion may well adjust their programming and charity to more robust postpartum and child-based supports.

This decision on Roe is unlikely to change minds on abortion. But we can create more space for joy, optimism and opportunity for all families to flourish, irrespective of the state a child is born into or their parents’ political orientations. This decision underscores the need to do just that.”

What's Coming Home With Our Kids?

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, March 20, 2022

“Like most parents of young children, I operate in a state between exhaustion and getting things done. Which is why, when my son came home with a Dallas ISD-issued iPad at the beginning of the school year, I felt a tinge of I-don’t-like-that as we try to keep screen time to a minimum in our home.

But soon I got distracted. My nursing infant, work clients, tantruming toddler, concerns about a resurgence of COVID-19, they all had their demands. Plus, we love our neighborhood, and we want to participate in the public schools. And we assumed that there were thoughtful policies in place.

When I finally got up the energy one night to fire up my 6-year-old son’s iPad after his bedtime, to see what he had access to other than the education apps, I was shocked.”

An Idea For Paid Family Leave That Just Might Work

Abby McCloskey, The Dispatch, March 15, 2022

“The collapse of Build Back Better has opened up more space for Republicans to innovate on paid leave, and a new idea is taking shape that could garner bipartisan support.

Here’s the nut of it: Provide parents a flat, lump sum benefit upon the birth or adoption of a child. Pair this benefit with a limited expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act, specific to birth and for a more limited amount of time but for which nearly every worker would be eligible (relative to the 40 percent of workers excluded from FMLA protections today).” 

Conservatives need to step up, present a paid leave plan of their own

Abby McCloskey, Press Herald, February 25, 2022

“Paid leave doesn’t need to fall into the binary trap that forces Americans to choose between either an expensive and unwieldy Democrat-led paid leave plan such as that included in Build Back Better – or maintaining a broken status quo, wherein nearly half of families lack pay or job protection upon the birth of a child. The reality is that there are prudent choices for reform in the middle. It’s time for conservatives to put forward a plan that cuts through the gridlock, to the benefit of all American families.”

The Marvelous McCloskeys

D Magazine, February 2022

“Of course, I entered the McCloskeys’ Lakewood home knowing that they could not share significant parts of their lives, seeing as Abby has advised three presidential hopefuls and David has worked for two of the world’s most secretive organizations, the CIA and the consulting firm, McKinsey. David, for example, can’t tell me about his time in Syria other than he “lived there for a while” in the years before the disastrous civil war. He later talks about touring a nuclear reactor with a McKinsey client, then demurs when I ask where the plant was located; that might reveal the client’s identity. I honestly don’t even think to ask Abby for dirt on Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz or Rick Perry, both of whom she served as domestic policy director. That isn’t why I am here. . . . “

The Future of Family Policy

Abby McCloskey, National Affairs, Winter 2022

“Each political season takes on a flavor of its own, driven by underlying internal pressures in addition to external events. Generational shifts in the nature of care, family, and work, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic, have catapulted the need for family-policy reform to the forefront of our age.

Few issues are more important than those related to the American family. Academic research overwhelmingly suggests that what happens in a child's first five years has lifetime implications for his well-being. Meanwhile, the workforce-related decisions a mother makes while her child is young will have lifetime implications for her earning potential and her family's financial independence.

The left's universal solutions to child-care and family-related challenges may be the wrong approach, but there's plenty of fertile policy ground for conservatives to cultivate. Republican lawmakers can provide more options that encourage parents to stay home during the early months of life, where the evidence is unequivocal about the importance of parental involvement. They can provide more choices for parents to bridge the gap between care and work following this time, maximizing parental choice in child-care providers and targeting the greatest levels of support at those families for whom high-quality care is most out of reach. Understandably, there is a desire to not tilt the scales against parents who stay at home with their children. Yet this concern should not be used to stymie reforms that would benefit the vast majority of American families.

Republicans have long been reluctant to tackle family policy. The good news is that they have a large — and mostly blank — canvas to paint on. It's time for the GOP to put forward a compelling policy vision that would meaningfully change the lives of young children, parents, and families, to the benefit of us all.”

Biden's Family Agenda, One Year Later

Abby McCloskey, The Dispatch, January 14, 2022

Editor’s note: In the months before Joe Biden became president, we published a series of pieces from expert analysts breaking down his policy agenda, from the courts to foreign policy to education to federal spending. Now we’re updating the series, with the same authors checking in on Biden’s progress a year into his term.

President Biden campaigned on an early childhood proposal remarkably similar to what ended up being part of the Build Back Better proposal, including 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, affordable or nearly free childcare, child allowances, and universal preschool.  At the time, I wrote an essay for The Dispatch outlining the pros and cons of his approach, as well as putting forward an alternative and more targeted proposal based on where we have the most evidence. My concerns and proposals on substance have changed little since then.   

But the road for policy reform was theoretical at that point.  In the last year, the  process has unfolded in practice, allowing us to assess the administration’s performance and what it means for family policy reform going forward.

Why Republicans Need A Child Care Plan Of Their Own

Abby McCloskey, Politico, December 9, 2021

“While the administration should be applauded for its attention on working families, their plan is likely to make a bad problem worse over the long run. Republicans can propose a better deal, and maybe even given some lawmakers a reason to alter or abandon the Democrats’ bill.”

The pandemic busted all notions of work-life balance, to the benefit of working moms

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, December 5, 2021

“It used to be cutting edge to provide paid leave and childcare benefits, or to provide private spaces and breaks for women to pump.  To be sure, such policies still remain the exception and not the norm.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than one in four parents has any type of formal family leave policy from their company following the birth or adoption of a child.  Many breastfeeding or pumping rooms are still dank, depressing closets if they exist at all.

But now parents are now asking for a more fundamental restructure of what work looks like and how to blend work and family life.  Specifically, the vast majority of workers  - regardless of gender or age - are asking for increased flexibility, with parents particularly keen on it. A recent CNBC poll found that half of Americans are considering quitting their job, with working parents twice as likely to want to leave their current job. “

Without Roe, The GOP Must Take Responsibility To Care For More Babies

Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News, December 3, 2021

“At its simplest level, more restrictions on abortion will result in more babies born. Research shows that many will be born into uncomfortable situations, where they were not planned or into families that are not financially or relationally secure and who will struggle to provide a high level of care. While abortion used to be only loosely related to income, in recent decades abortions increasingly have become concentrated among impoverished women. In the most recent survey of abortion patients conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of abortions are performed for women living below the poverty line as of 2014 (up from 30% in 1987), and 75% were to women considered poor or low-income.”

Politico Inaugural Women Rule: The Exchange

Last week, POLITICO launched Women Rule: The Exchange. Women Rule: The Exchange is a membership program that convenes and connects women in positions of leadership to unpack critical questions facing women across America as they shape our nation’s “new normal.” Members meet quarterly to confront today’s most pressing challenges, sharing insights, best practices, and solutions from diverse perspectives, including public and private sectors, academia, and civil society. Learn more about Women Rule: The Exchange here.

On the heels of our inaugural meeting as we talked to women leaders in politics, policy and business about how they are responding to this moment. The past two years have upended not only the way women work, but also what women expect and demand from their workplaces. How should businesses, governments and workers take advantage of this opportunity to reinvent — to rethink what wasn’t working and to build better working environments for women moving forward?

With Biden's $3.5T bill on ice, let's chisel

Abby McCloskey, Dallas News, October 17, 2021

Most Americans (60%) are glad for the “strategic pause,” according to the bipartisan group No Labels. Just because we’ve spent trillions of dollars in COVID-19 relief doesn’t mean that trillions more can be printed without consequence, for inflation or otherwise. The corporate tax hike is the opposite of what should happen in an economic recovery, which even liberal economists acknowledge will be paid for in part by workers.

There’s a wide open question about how these programs are paid for beyond the 10-year budget window (when our entitlement programs are also on track to collapse, if not before). And many of the proposed programs are a heavy-handed big government approach to problems that would benefit from greater levels of innovation, targeting and choice.

But problems with the reconciliation package don’t negate the need to better support America’s working families.

Why Texas Pro Life Republicans Should Support Paid Family Leave

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, September 20, 2021

“All infants deserve the ability to spend the first weeks of life with their parents, irrespective of what family they are born into, their family’s financial position, or what company their parents work for. It should be a well-established norm, embedded deep in our culture, that all families can spend the first weeks of their new child’s life together. A fundamental right we protect, not an aberration or a company perk.”