Why can't the U.S. do that?

That's a great question.

And what's really important about Paid parental leave is that it addresses a lot of the problems with the way our system works now.

So we ask parents, and then this is all parents, 0 to 18, what is their level of support for different programs that a state might offer? The strongest support was for paid leave during pregnancy and the newborn period.

Three in four parents said they strongly support that policy, more than strong support for providing formula or healthy food, which was about two-thirds, providing free or reduced child care or car seats or diapers.

And here's what's so important about paid leave.

Every family has different assets and resources at their disposal.

A listener asks, how has remote work helped or hurt expectations of parents of young children?

How dire is this? What did you learn from this poll as far as the frustration parents have when they've got, uh, small children?

This kind of breaks my heart.

Two in five parents of a, a kid zero to three years old describe their current financial situation as struggling or just getting by.

And in that group, 37% of them said they are worrying about their financial situation constantly.

And, you know, it's, it's hard to be a parent of a small child to start out with, right? And then when you throw on top of that worrying about whether you have enough money to, to just live and get by, tha- that's a huge burden.

It's not good for kids.

It's not good for parents.

And what kinds of ways are you talking about, Sarah?

What are the differences that you found between those groups?

There was a subset of the, the, the tracker parents who had sort of practical purposes for doing it, like, "I wanna know if it's a good time to call." Um, uh, and that's, that to me seems, uh, like a, a pretty practical reason to do that as opposed to just, "I feel like I need to know where they're at or where they're up to." So I, I think that makes sense.

Another example would be, um, they are, uh, driving in an unfamiliar place, don't wanna bug them with calling, but maybe we agree, "Hey, we'll just keep an eye on you till everybody's sure." You know, uh, in fairness to the parents, young adults are often doing things for the first time.

They're driving on the highway a couple hours for the first time or, or they're navigating in a new city.

Um, so I think, again, having conversations about, "What are we using this technology for? H- what boundaries are we putting around it?" And then everybody has to stick to the, to the agreement, right?

Hmm

... a big chunk of it is parents during the day contacting their kids, and some of it is checking to make sure they're okay.

Some of it is dumb stuff like, "Hey, I was thinking of chicken for dinner.