If you pay attention to writing about policy and culture on the political right in America,

you will have noticed a great deal of writing about family policy over the last many months.

Essays and articles in the American mind, American

Compass, public discourse, first things, national affairs, the whole question of what the government

can do to strengthen the formation of American families has claimed a great deal of attention.

That's a good thing, since the family is the first and most important

institution of human formation. Children who are born into healthy families receive an unmerited

gift that provides social and economic advantages no less than civic and moral ones. Children who

are born into unhealthy and even broken families have a real disadvantage, and not only for them, but the adverse effects of an unhealthy family culture can be felt in neighborhoods, labor markets, schools, and maternity wards.

American society is clearly better as a whole when America's families are healthier. And so it stands to reason that we should

try to think about creating a policy environment that is conducive to family flourishing,

or at the very least, that doesn't make it harder for families to come together and endure.

But how? Should we try to incentivize marriage? Should we try to incentivize procreation? Should we try to provide for child care? What should and what shouldn't the government do?

Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. Looking at past experiments in American public policy and looking also at international comparisons. My guest today is the Manhattan

Institute senior fellow Andy Smerich, who joins me to discuss his January 22 Mosaic essay,

What's Behind New Proposals to Help the American Family. I have to say that I myself am sympathetic

to the impulse behind using public funds to help the family thrive.

But Andy's essay opened up two large kinds of questions that need discussing.

First, he discovers that when legislators and policy intellectuals on the left and right

each take up the question of family policy, They're often talking about very different things,

different ways, that is, of understanding what a family is. The question of how to strengthen the

American family inevitably requires that we posit a definition of what a family is. And that means

...