In this episode, our hosts Bruce Lesley and Messellech “Selley” Looby chat with Abby McCloskey, who directed the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families, a project bringing together 31 family policy leaders of diverse ideologies and included our co-host Bruce Lesley. The Convergence process issued a final report entitled In This Together: A Cross-Partisan Action Plan to Support Families with Young Children in America.

McCloskey discusses some of the collaborative’s cross-partisan policy recommendations, such as creating government structures focused explicitly on children and offering 12 weeks of paid parental leave. McCloskey emphasizes that bringing these recommendations to fruition will require bipartisan effort.

Today’s children are in crisis. They face rising maternal and infant mortality rates, a mental health epidemic, a public education system under attack, increasing homelessness, and other challenges. McCloskey outlines the importance of working through political polarization to create bipartisan solutions that address these and other issues affecting our nation’s children.

Learn more about the need to prioritize children in policy:

• Article, Our kids are not OK. Neither is our child policy, Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News
• Report: Beyond Rhetoric: A New American Agenda for Children and Families, the National Commission on Children, 1991
• Article, States With Abortion Bans Are Among Least Supportive for Mothers and Children, Emily Badger, Margot Sanger-Katz and Claire Cain Miller, New York Times
• Article, ‘Couples Therapy,’ but for Politics, Jessica Grose, New York Times

Be sure to check out Abby McCloskey’s website and follow her policy work on X.

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