Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner: on Families & Children

Bill Clinton: Favors parental choice in childcare & in education

Some of the Children's Defense Fund's positions pitted Bill and Hillary Clinton against each other. When the CDF lobbied for an array of federal standards governing child care, Bill Clinton, then head of the National Governors' Association, opposed them and won.

They also parted company on the ABC child-care program, a proposal designed to encourage national standards, centralized service delivery, and credentialized care-givers. Hillary strongly supported the bill, which Bill opposed, and it was defeated in Congress in 1990. Bill Clinton's own Arkansas child-care bill, like his education reforms, includes elements of parental choice.

Source: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner, p. 211 Aug 1, 1993

Hillary Clinton: 1973: Legal parallels between marriage and slavery

In a 1973 article, "Children Under the Law," she wrote: "The basic rationale for depriving people of rights in a dependency relationship is that certain individuals are incapable or undeserving of the right to take care of themselves.... Along with the family, past and present examples of such arrangements include marriage, slavery and the Indian reservation system."

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.

Source: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner, p. 205-6 Aug 1, 1993

Hillary Clinton: 1973: Create legal scale of graduated maturity for children

Children had virtually no legal rights when Hillary wrote her 1973 article. The "dependency relationship" that children necessarily had with their parents assumed that non-delinquents did not have a separate right to independent legal counsel. This, Hillary Rodham argued, was a gross oversight, and deprived children of a fair chance to have their special needs and interests recognized by the law.

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.

Source: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner, p. 206-7 Aug 1, 1993

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

A frequently quoted statement of Hillary Rodham's comes from a chapter in a 1979 book Children's Rights: Contemporary Perspectives: "Decisions about motherhood and abortion, schooling, cosmetic surgery, treatment of venereal disease, or employment & others where the decision or lack of one will significantly affect the child's future should not be made unilaterally by parents." This was taken by conservatives to mean that she favored teenagers suing their parents to have a nose job or liposuction. But in fact, "there's nothing in her articles that addresses the issue of children suing their parents." The citation at issue was actually part of a longer paragraph that sought to limit the kinds of "extreme cases" in which courts might intrude in resolving conflicts between children's rights and their parents. The whole issue of court or government intervention in to the private sphere of the home is one in which her views have been particularly distorted. Source: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner, p. 207-8 Aug 1, 1993

Hillary Clinton: Against social service agency interference in families

Conservatives have called Hillary Clinton a proponent of more government interference in the home. In fact, time and again in her writings over the years, she has argued that less is best. Although it is true that her idea of granting children competency would have made it easier for the state to remove them from parental control in abuse situations, Hillary Rodham was actually one of the first legal scholars to warn against excessive government interference in family life through social service agencies Source: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner, p. 208 Aug 1, 1993

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

Hillary approached Marian Wright Edelman and asked if she could work during her summer break for the Washington Research Project [the predecessor of Edelman's Children's Defense Fund]. Hillary asked her whether, if she could figure out how to be paid, sh could come to work for her. Edelman said of course.

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.

Source: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner, p. 61 Aug 1, 1993

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

Hillary studied children's rights at Yale's Child Study Center. And she also helped research a book, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child, which was published in 1973. The thesis of the book was to set standards for evaluating the best interests of the child in regard to conflicts in custody placement.

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.

Source: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner, p. 62 Aug 1, 1993

The above quotations are from Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story, by Judith Warner. Click here for definitions & background information on Families & Children. Click here for other issues (main summary page). Click here for more quotes by Hillary Clinton on Families & Children. Click here for more quotes by Bill Clinton on Families & Children.
*Candidates and political leaders on Families & Children:*
*Incoming Obama Administration:* Pres.:Sen.Barack Obama V.P.:Sen.Joe Biden State:Hillary Clinton HHS:Tom Daschle Staff:Rahm Emanuel Treas.:Tim Geithner DoD:Robert Gates A.G.:Eric Holder DHS:Janet Napolitano DoC:Bill Richardson	*Outgoing Bush Administration:* Pres.:George Bush V.P.:Dick Cheney A.G.:John Ashcroft(2005) DEA:Asa Hutchinson(2005) USDA:Mike Johanns(2007) EPA:Mike Leavitt HUD:Mel Martinez(2003) State:Colin Powell(2005) State:Condoleezza Rice HHS:Tommy Thompson(2005)	*2008 Presidential contenders:* AIP: Frank McEnulty Constitution: Chuck Baldwin GOP: Sen.John McCain GOP VP: Gov.Sarah Palin Green: Rep.Cynthia McKinney Independent: Ralph Nader Liberation: Gloria La Riva Libertarian: Rep.Bob Barr NAIP: Amb.Alan Keyes Socialist: Brian Moore
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