Introduction

Guest-hosted by Julia Carpenter: The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But when it comes to support for parents and families, we lag behind many of our peers. We have relatively high infant- and maternal-mortality rates and no national parental-leave policy. We spend far less on early-childhood care than other wealthy countries do. Economist and parenting expert Emily Oster argues that it doesn’t have to be this way. She sat down with Apple News In Conversation guest host Julia Carpenter to talk about some concrete ways we could make this country a better place to start a family.