No Child Left Alone: Getting the Government Out of Parenting
Interview with Author Abby Schachter
"Every rule that gets written has a cost," explains Abby Schachter, author of the new book No Child Left Alone: Getting the Government Out of Parenting. "I don't know if parents [understand] that under the headline 'we're going to keep your children safe' [or] 'we're going to protect the kids' that that is really code for 'we're taking your rights away.'"
Schachter credits a personal experience with Pennsylvania's restrictive regulations over swaddling in daycare to her interest in documenting how the government is getting more involved in raising children and restricting parents' choices. "I had to go find the people who made up this rule about swaddling and they weren't in my state and they weren't even accountable," Schachter says.
Reason TV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Schachter to talk about her book, her fight to have her youngest child swaddled (0:57), how government officials take obese children from their parents (2:52), the loss of unsupervised play among kids (4:01), warning labels (8:06), and the connection between her work and college students' demand for safe spaces (11:03).
Edited by Joshua Swain and Ian Keyser. Camera by Todd Krainin and Austin Bragg. Music by Podington Bear.
