OnTheIssues interviews with presidential candidates: on Families & Children

Mark Stewart: Encourage adoption and surrogate pregnancies

A: Women can make good money as baby-carriers for Americans who otherwise are spending huge sums dealing with Chinese and Russian adoption bureaucracies. There is nothing immoral about carrying life for another; it IS immoral to snuff out that life for your own convenience.

Yes, this "burdens" women and not men. Eliminating an extra burden on some does not balance snuffing out innocent babies. Women feeling burdened could instead take the upside: only you can deliver that soon-to-be-happy, healthy baby to parents who will be forever grateful. Your temporary burden is making a better world.

Varying state criminality codes is what our Framers envisioned. A president cannot alter Supreme Court rulings. But he can say from the "bully pulpit" that abortion is wrong, and implore women to carry babies to term and give them to couples who are willing and able to care for these newborns.

Jill Stein: Kids in poverty can't go to school in condition to learn

Stein: Education is inseparable from child health--kids living in poverty, in a food desert, their families subject to homelessness and unemployment--there's no way those kids can come to school in a condition to learn. As a first order of business, education needs to be integrated into a total system of eliminating poverty. As a first step, kids need to eat well, and should not be coming to school fed the kind of food that is inflicted on low-income communities. The prevailing wisdom is that you just need to test kids harder--it's so clueless that we've developed this concept of education as separate from the health of the child--[as if kids are] not subject to pollution exposure, food issues, dodging bullets, etc.

Jill Stein: Half-million in foster care means system is dysfunctional

Stein: First, there are half million US kids in foster care now--it's a sign that our families and our communities are in crisis, that so many children are in need of new homes. The issue here is that our families and community are continuing to be under attack. This is a red flag in the realm of public health--this is a symptom of a system in dysfunction. What needs fixing is reproductive healthcare and getting families out of crisis, and ensuring that child welfare is working so that children can be properly placed, including that LGBT rights should not be a factor in adoption.

OnTheIssues: What about adoption, and adopting from abroad?

Stein: Adopting from abroad--our first impulse should be to stabilize families, community, & the economy so that kids don't have to be put up for adoption. But [if needed, then] adoption should be done in an equitable way to ensure the health of the children.

Jill Stein: Don't assume that mothers should always get custody

Stein: Fathers should have an equal hand in their kids' lives--arrangements after divorce need to favor the child first, but once the child is protected, both mother & father should be equal. The child should be able to engage both parents unless there is some specific reason that one parent is a danger to the child--it should not be assumed that mothers should get custody and fathers should be cut out.

Robert Steele: Back to one-income families & stay-at-home opportunities

• The family is the core unit of a nation--all policies at all levels should be family-friendly
• We need to work back toward one-income families and stay-at-home opportunities for parents
• We need to redesign communities toward multi-generational families and senior integration

Brian Moore: 16 months paid maternity & paternity leave