There’s a growing belief that parents need to take more control, question long-trusted institutions, and rely on themselves more to make better choices. There is truth in the idea that knowledge is power and that we can all benefit from learning about the science behind the facts. But this framing carries a hidden assumption: that all families have the same access and resources available to them.
When we tell parents to make better individual choices without fixing the systems that shape those choices, we’re transferring the burden, not solving the problem.
What families need most is the kind of support that makes good decisions possible in the first place: trusted, factual information that doesn’t shift with the political winds, access to good care and healthy food, and communities that don’t leave parents sorting through competing claims all by themselves.
The above excerpt of an article originally published in Motherly.
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