Few people realize that raising children is the single largest industry in the United States. 

Parents are expected not only to care for their children but to help them develop the skills they will need to thrive in today’s socioeconomic reality — but most parents, including even the most caring parents on the planet, are not trained in skill development and lack the resources to get help. How do we fix this? The solution, economist Nate Hilger argues, is to ask less of parents, not more. Hilger makes the case that America should consider child development a public investment with a monumental payoff, and suggests that we need a program like Medicare — call it Familycare — to drive this investment. To make it happen, parents must organize to wield their political power on behalf of children — who will always be the largest bloc of disenfranchised people in this country.

In his new book The Parent Trap, Hilger exposes the true costs of our society’s unrealistic expectations around parenting and lays out a profoundly hopeful blueprint for reform.

Nate G. Hilger is an economist and data scientist in Silicon Valley. His debut book, The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis, was listed as Required Reading for Parents by the Next Big Idea Club and named a Favorite Parenting Book of 2022 by Greater Good Magazine. His work on child development and inequality has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, The Washington Post, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and many other media outlets.

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