Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, will join a panel of distinguished scholars and experts today for a Deseret News and Institute for Family Studies webinar.
The webinar, titled “Cash or Child Care: What Do American Parents Want? A Conversation with Sen. Romney,” begins at 1:30 p.m. MT and can be watched on YouTube.
The panel will explore how to best strengthen the American family. The pandemic hit families hard in the United States. Between balancing school closures and lost income, households are still struggling. Some have simply forgone family formation altogether as fertility rates continued their slide to record lows. Politicians across the partisan spectrum are looking for solutions.
In February, Romney proposed the Family Security Act. The bill would provide direct cash payments of $4,200 per child (ages 5 and younger) and $3,000 per child (ages 6 to 17). President Joe Biden’s own chief of staff, Ron Klain, called Romney’s proposal “an encouraging sign that bipartisan action to reduce child poverty IS possible.”
President Biden’s American Families Plan takes a different path, combining a more modest child allowance with a major expansion of federal funding for child care.
Which approach best aligns with the wishes of ordinary American parents?
Moderating the conversation is Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. Alongside Romney, Wilcox will be joined in the conversation by Jenet Erickson, a Deseret News contributing writer and a BYU Wheatley Fellow, and Margarita Mooney Suarez, a professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary.