Putting a Price on Our Children

Ask policy makers to sketch their dream family, and they might come up with one something like Susie's. She and her husband are young and work hard, and they have a toddler and plans for more. They've moved inland to a regional town, where Susie works as a midwife, a profession often badly short-staffed in rural areas. The community needs her, and she needs to work to help pay the mortgage. So everyone's happy, right? Not quite. The birth of Susie's first child almost forced her out of the workforce. Not only does her town have no child-care center, but she...