Hillary Clinton on Families & Children Secretary of State; previously Democratic Senator (NY)

Sub-sections under Families & Children:
• Child Law
• It Takes a Village
• Legislation
• Other issues under Families & Children

I have 30 years of experience helping kids and families

The Trump Effect: kids are uneasy and fearful

US needs paid family leave, to join rest of the world

SANDERS: [If I'm elected], we are going to have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth.

O'MALLEY: In our state, we actually expanded family leave. We would be a stronger nation economically if we had paid family leave.

Design paid-leave system that doesn't burden small business

Our generation is blessed by extra years with aging parents

Having her so close became a source of great comfort to me, especially in the difficult period after the end of the 2008 campaign. I'd come home from a long day at the Senate or the State Department, slide in next to her at the small table in our breakfast nook, and let everything just pour out.

Grew AR Children's Hospital to one of nation's 10 largest

Hillary did the things she did because she wanted to make a difference. And she did then because it made her happy to see another baby in a small town get health care, another young child smiling at her pre ceremony, another student from a rural area become the first in his family to go to college, another woman break through the glass ceiling at a law firm.

Struggling families are invisible to Bush administration

Voice-over Announcer: Hillary Clinton has spent her life standing up for people others don’t see.

Hillary Clinton: You know, if you’re a family that is struggling, and you don’t have health care well you are invisible to this President. If you’re a single mom trying to find affordable child care so you can go to work, well you’re invisible too. And I never thought I would see that our soldiers who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan would be treated as though they were invisible as well.

Hillary: Americans from all walks of life across our country may be invisible to this President, but they’re not invisible to me and they won’t be invisible to the next President of the United States.

1980s: her church founded largest daycare in Arkansas

Hillary clearly supported the center, which was consistent with her deep interest in child care. She personally donated funds to the center, which today serves more than 300 children in full-time & after-school child care, children of working parents in downtown Little Rock. It is the largest state-licensed child care facility in the state of Arkansas, housing a huge staff of more than 70. The facility in many ways reflects the vision for communal support that Hillary would later outline in her book It Takes a Village.

Family planning & child spacing is international human right

Others, however, were not so easily satisfied. While Hillary did not actually use the word abortion elsewhere in her talk, she used substitute phrases like family planning. Most alarming to her detractors, she affirmed an international “right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children” that a woman desires, implying without stating that abortion was a basic human right. In fact, an international news agency later reported that she had called abortion a human right.

Mother’s difficult childhood sparked concern for kids

Learning about my mother’s childhood sparked my strong conviction that every child deserves a chance to live up to her God-given potential and that we should never quit on any child.

We all depend on adults whom we know and on those we may not to help us inform, support, or protect our children. In the last ten years, science has proven how resilient children can be despite great obstacles. And that’s where other adults may step in, to help nurture children and to provide positive role models.

Teen abstinence is the right thing to do

"Research shows that the primary reason that teenage girls abstain is because of their religious and moral values. We should embrace this--and support programs that reinforce the idea that abstinence at a young age is not just the smart thing to do, it is the right thing to do. But we should also recognize what works and what doesn't work, and to be fair, the jury is still out on the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs. I don't think this debate should be about ideology, it should be about facts and evidence--we have to deal with the choices young people make, not just the choice we wish they would make."

Even welfare children are better off with their parents

I thought this was horrible idea. All the work I have done on behalf of children convinced me that they are almost always best off with their families, that poverty is not a disqualification from good parenting, that financial and social support for families with special problems, including poverty, should be a first step before we give up on them and take away their children. Only when children are endangered by abuse and neglect should the government intervene on their behalf.

In a speech before the New York Women's Agenda on Nov. 30, 1994, I criticized Gingrich for promoting legislation that punished children for circumstances over which they had no control.

Gingrich swung back: "I'd ask her to go to Blockbuster and rent the movie Boys Town [an orphanage]."

Caution in treating preschoolers with psychiatric drugs

Parents’ dedication improves kids’ lives

Boycott violent media and products

Send message: It is the job of children to learn

Help “sandwiched” parents care for elderly plus kids

More funds for after-school programs

Keep kids busy from 2PM to 8 PM to avoid trouble

Spend more time with kids to prevent violence

Teens not ready for sex; provide havens for alternatives

Change what kids see in the media

I don’t think there is any doubt that if you give children a steady diet of what they get on most programming, it is going to distort their view of the world.

Men should be full participants in child-raising

Women and children need men to be full participants in the raising of children, and men need the opportunity and joy of being those participants in their own families.

The primary obligation of both parents is to take whatever gift God gave you in the person of that little boy or girl and pay attention to that child’s needs, to respond to that child, to stimulate that child, to be there for that child, and to learn the kind of personality your child has so that you’re allowing your child to flourish.

Improving women's lives improves children's lives

If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too. Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care; families rely on women for labor in the home; and increasingly, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives. As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace around the world--as long as girls and woman are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled and subjected to violence in and out of their homes--the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized. Let this conference be our, and the world's, call to action.

1973: Legal parallels between marriage and slavery

Although this statement was interpreted by conservatives to have "likened the American family to slavery," it clearly did no such thing It described how the law had historically treated certain classes of people as dependents on others, without the legal right to speak for themselves. And in doing so, it simply reiterated certain well-known facts. Until modern times, married women had few legal rights and were considered legally dependent upon their husbands.

The fact that there were indeed clear parallels between slavery and marriage in the past in terms of the distribution and administration of power was not a radical concept.

No tea and cookies for her, but no insult intended

I’ve made my share of cookies and served hundreds of cups of tea. It never occurred to me that my comment would insult mothers who choose to stay home with their children. Nor did it occur to me that the headlines would reduce me to an anti-family “career woman.”

Served as chairman of the Children's Defense Fund

Support new parents to promote healthy child development

Among the issues she has fought for and will make a priority as president are:
• Giving new parents support and training to promote healthy development for their children.
• Helping to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act to enable new parents to take time off without losing their jobs, and expanding it to make it available to more parents and to provide for longer leave.
• Advocating for adoption and for abused and neglected children--as First Lady, Hillary pushed legislation that more than doubled adoptions out of foster care.
• Providing meaningful support to households, called “kinship care” families, where grandparents and other relatives are raising children.

For teens, not about birth control, but about self-control

1970s: “I want to be a voice for America’s children”

Hillary learned that children needed their own advocates when they were victims. A lawyer filed a lawsuit on behalf of a woman who sued the Connecticut Department of Social Services, attempting to overturn its decision that foster parents were not eligible to adopt. Hillary lost the case, but it introduced Hillary to a new calling. “I realized that what I wanted to do with the law was to give voice to children who were not being heard.”

Hillary’s mom, Dorothy Rodham, had overcome deep emotional scars with the unselfish help of caring adults and now Hillary knew she wanted to give this gift too. “I want to be a voice for America’s children,” she declared.

Supported foster care adoptions as First Lady & as Senator

I've spent 30 years worrying about impact of media on kids

"It is probably the single most commonly mentioned issue to me by young parents, almost no matter where I go, when we start talking about raising children. We start talking about the challenges of parenting today, and all of a sudden people are exchanging their deep concerns about losing control over the raising of their own children, ceding the responsibility of implicating values and behaviors to a multi-dimensional media marketplace that they have no control over and most of us don't really understand because it is moving so fast we can't keep up with it. And so I've spent more than 30 years advocating for children and worrying about the impact of the media."

You don't have to convince Hillary that it's poison, or that parents need help.

Critics misinterpret 70s article on "Children Under the Law"

In the original piece, Hillary says, "Ascribing rights to children will force from the judiciary and the legislature institutional support for the child's point of view." In the essay, Hillary reveals her view that the family and marriage are just artificial constructs--policies, really--that can be altered at will: "The basic rationale for depriving people of rights in a dependency relationship is that certain individuals are incapable of the right to take care of themselves. Examples of such arrangements include marriage, slavery, and the Indian reservation system."

1974 article: put abused children into state care

Who would have predicted that during the 1992 presidential campaign, nearly two decades after I wrote the article, conservative Republicans like Marilyn Quayle and Pat Buchanan would twist my words to portray me as “anti-family”?

Leave politics out of Elian decision

Governments can’t love child; but it can help families

Decide Elian’s fate via ongoing INS legal process

Treat kids as “child citizens” not “minors” under the law

No dividing line between government vs. parents & children

Early-warning hotlines for homicidal & suicidal students

Raised issues of maternity leave at 1980s Rose Law

They had assumed she would quit “when her husband got a real job.” They had assumed she would quit “when Bill became governor.” Surely she would quit “when she had a baby.” When Hillary gave birth to Chelsea, the partners questioned whether she would be paid for the six weeks she took off. They also thought it was shameful for her to leave her new baby and come back to work.

None of this carping was done in her face, you understand. That wasn’t the Rose firm way. But in private meetings and over lunch, they would say, “Does she really expect to be paid for when she was away?” They criticized her every chance they got.

Against social service agency interference in families

1970s: Learned child law theory at CDF and at Yale

Edelman sent her to work with Senator Walter Mondale's subcommittee, which was studying the conditions of workers in migrant labor camps. She did interviews with workers and their families, assessing the hardships their children suffered. She later studied the problems posed by segregated academies that were fighting for tax-exempt status under the Nixon Administration. She returned to New Haven afterward with her interest in children now backed by professional experience and a sense of her own potential for accomplishment.

At that point Hillary sought out faculty members with whom she could further her interests in children's legal theory and increase her knowledge of child development.

1973: Researched "Beyond the Best Interest of the Child"

Working with other faculty members, Hillary participated in direct observations of children at play. She assisted the center's nursery school teachers, observed while diagnostic tests were conducted, and took part in a reading seminar on child development literature. She applied herself to learning what she could about children's development goals and needs with as much rigor as she had earlier directed to the field of law. Her focus was particularly directed at normal childhood development and its variations. She impressed her instructors with her understanding of, and compassion for, the complexity and depth of children's lives.

1973: Create legal scale of graduated maturity for children

She suggested abolishing the legal status of minority, and that all procedural rights guaranteed to adults under the Constitution should be granted to children whenever the state moves against them. She made the point that the legal reasoning that characterizes as "minor" everyone under 18 or 21 was artificial and simplistic and did not take into account the dramatic differences in competency among children of different ages. Hillary argued in favor of creating a scale of graduated maturity, through which the increasing competence of children would be taken into account.

1979: Child's future shouldn't be unilaterally by parents

Even the odds so each child can live up to potential

A family is a child’s first school

Hillary’s “village” criticized as Big Government

When Bob Dole noted that Hillary’s “village” was in fact big government, Hillary feigned umbrage. “He mistakenly used my notion of the village as a metaphor for the state and implied that I, and by extension Democrats, favor government intrusion into every aspect of life.”

But Dole was not mistaken. Here are a few things you will find in Hillary’s village: Universal health care; Parent education featuring home visitors; Government programs to tell children what to eat; Government-funded TV; Government-funded preschool/day care starting at three or younger. This is good?

Chelsea benefited from “village” & from two parents

It takes a village to raise a child, in interdependent world

OpEd: "It Takes A Village" really means big government

Certainly Sen. Clinton didn't mean for us to take the aphorism LITERALLY; her book did not focus on the problem of not enough authentic villages. Rather, she intended "the village" to be understood METAPHORICALLY. Liberals like Sen. Clinton see "the village" as society as a whole--influenced by, directed by, supported by, the supposed goodness of big government.

Conservatives see "the village" as, well, the village: the local community, with the family at the center of it. We believe that only strong families can improve the lives of individuals, especially children, and make for healthy communities.

It Takes a Village and a president who believes

. Yes, it takes a village.

And it takes a president. It takes a president who believes not only in the potential of his own child, but of all children--who believes not only in the strength of his own family, but of the American family, who believes not only in the promise of each of us as individuals, but in our promise together as a nation

"It Takes a Village" implies family as part of society

Dole missed the point of the book, which is that families are the first line of responsibility for children, but that the village--a metaphor for society as a whole--shares responsibility for the culture, economy and environment in which our children grow up. The policeman walking the beat, the teacher in the classroom, the legislator passing laws and the corporate executive deciding what movies to make all have influence over America's children.

Leave no child behind; it still takes a village

What will it take to make sure no child in America is left behind in the 21st century? It takes responsible parents who put their own children first. It takes all of us -- teachers, workers, business owners, community leaders and people of faith. You know, I still believe it takes a village.

Community support is key to valuing families

Society is responsible for alienation that causes violence

“It Takes a Village” is about relationships, not geography

Children are not rugged individualists

I have spent much of the past 25 years working to improve the lives of children. My work has taught me that they need more of our time, energy, and resources. But no experience brought home the lesson as vividly as becoming a mother myself.

When Chelsea Victoria Clinton lay in my arms for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the love and responsibility I felt for her. Despite all the books I had read, all the children I had studied and advocated for, nothing had prepared me for the sheer miracle of her being.

Expand Family and Medical Leave Act

Family Leave Act is a good start; paid leave better

The Family and Medical Leave Act guarantees unpaid leave to employees in firms with more than 50 workers. Many parents, however, cannot afford to forgo pay for even a few weeks, and very few employers in America offer paid maternity leave.

Only about half of all female workers of childbearing age are eligible for short-term disability benefits that would cover pregnancy and childbirth, because the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, while it prohibits discrimination against these conditions, does not mandate coverage where none exists.

Give parents tools to balance work and family.

Strengthen America’s Families
While the steady reduction in the number of two-parent families of the last 40 years has slowed, more than one-third of our children still live in one- or no-parent families. There is a high correlation between a childhood spent with inadequate parental support and an adulthood spent in poverty or in prison.

To strengthen families, we must redouble efforts to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, make work pay, eliminate tax policies that inadvertently penalize marriage, and require absent fathers to pay child support while offering them new opportunities to find work. Because every child needs the attention of at least one caring and competent adult, we should create an “extended family” of adult volunteer mentors.

Family breakdown is not the only challenge we face. As two-worker families have become the norm, harried parents have less time to spend on their most important job: raising their children. Moreover, parents and schools often find themselves contending with sex- and violence-saturated messages coming from an all-pervasive mass entertainment media.

We should continue public efforts to give parents tools to balance work and family and shield their children from harmful outside influences. For example, we should encourage employers to adopt family-friendly policies and practices such as parental leave, flex-time, and telecommuting. Public officials should speak out about violence in our culture and should press the entertainment media to adopt self-policing codes aimed at protecting children.

Goals for 2010
• Cut the rate of out-of-wedlock births in half.
• Recruit a million mentors for disadvantaged children without two parents.
• Provide affordable after-school programs at every public school.
• Make every workplace “family-friendly.”
• Promote policies that help parents shield their children from violence and sex in entertainment products.

Rated 0% by the Christian Coalition: an anti-Family-Value voting record.

The Christian Coalition was founded in 1989 by Dr. Pat Robertson to give Christians a voice in government. We represent millions of people of faith and enable them to have a strong, unified voice in the conversation we call democracy.

Our Five-Fold Mission:
1. Represent the pro-family point of view before local councils, school boards, state legislatures, and Congress
2. Speak out in the public arena and in the media
3. Train leaders for effective social and political action
4. Inform pro-family voters about timely issues and legislation
5. Protest anti-Christian bigotry and defend the rights of people of faith.

Ban high lead levels in children's toys.

OFFICIAL CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY: A bill to direct the Consumer Product Safety Commission to classify certain children's products containing lead to be banned hazardous substances.

SPONSOR'S INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: Sen. OBAMA: The unfortunate reality for many children--particularly in low-income and minority households--is the continued presence of high blood lead levels. Lead is a highly toxic substance that can produce a range of health problems in young children, including IQ deficiencies, hyperactivity, and damage to the kidneys, brain and bone marrow.

We know that lead poisoning is completely preventable. As the Nation has increased efforts to reduce environmental lead exposure, the number of children with high blood levels has steadily dropped. Restricting lead in gasoline and paint represent two major accomplishments in this regard. But much work remains to be done.

Disturbingly, lead is present in a number of toys and other frequently used objects by young children. About half of tested lunch boxes have unsafe levels of lead. In 2004, there were 3 recalls of nearly 150 million pieces of toy jewelry because of toxic levels of lead. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission has dragged its feet in aggressively addressing the problem of lead in toys.

It's a national disgrace that toys that could pose a serious and significant danger to children are readily available in our department stores and markets. The Lead Free Toys Act of 2005 will help us keep our children safe and healthy, and contribute to national efforts to reduce lead exposure.

LEGISLATIVE OUTCOME:Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; never came to a vote.

Sponsored bill against renting violent video games to kids.

OFFICIAL CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY:

• Prohibits a business from selling or renting any video game with a "Mature", "Adults-Only", or "Ratings Pending" rating to any individual who has not attained the age of 17 years.
• Authorizes the FTC to conduct an annual secret audit of businesses to determine how frequently minors who attempt to purchase such video games are able to do so successfully.
• Whenever the FTC determines that the content of a video game is inconsistent with the rating given to such game, it shall take appropriate action under its authority to regulate unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.

SPONSOR'S INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: Sen. CLINTON: I rise today to introduce a bill to help parents protect their children against violent and sexual media. I stand with the parents and children of the Nation, all of whom are being victimized by a culture of violence.

As parents, we monitor the kind of people who interact with our children. If somebody is exposing our children to material we find inappropriate, we remove our children from that person. Yet our children spend more time consuming media than doing anything else but sleeping and attending school. Media culture is like having a stranger in your house, and it exerts a major influence over your children.

This bill would take an important step towards helping parents protect their children against influences they often find to be inappropriate--violent and sexually explicit video games. Quite simply, the bill would put teeth into the video game industry's rating system, which specifies which video games are inappropriate for young people under 17. By fining retailers who do not abide by the ratings system, this bill sends a message that the ratings system is to be taken seriously.

LEGISLATIVE OUTCOME:Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; never came to a vote.

Call for a White House Conference on Children and Youth.

The White House Conference on Children and Youth in 2010 Act - Directs the President to call a White House Conference on Children and Youth in 2010 to: (1) encourage improvements in each state and local child welfare system; and (2) develop recommendations for actions to implement express policy regarding federal, state, and local programs. The Congress finds the following:

1. In 2005 there were over 3,000,000 reports of child abuse and neglect, and only 60% of the children from the substantiated reports received follow-up services and 20% were placed in foster care as a result of an investigation.
2. Almost 500,000 children and youth were in foster care at the end of 2004 and nearly 800,000 spent at least some time in foster care throughout the year.
3. There is an over-representation of certain populations, including Native Americans and African-Americans, in the child welfare system.
4. The State courts make key decisions in the lives of children involved in the child welfare system, including decisions of whether children have been victims of child abuse, whether parental rights should be terminated, and whether children should be reunified with their families, adopted, or placed in other settings.