A new book examines childcare policies across the globe – and asks whether parenthood in the US needs to be so hard
When Abigail Leonard saw the news that the Trump administration was considering handing out $5,000 “baby bonuses” to new mothers, she realized that she had already received one.
A longtime international reporter, Leonard gave birth to three children while living in Japan, which offers a year of parental leave, publicly run daycare, and lump-sum grants to new parents that amount to thousands of US dollars. But it was not until moving back to the US in 2023 that Leonard grasped just how robust Japan’s social safety net for families is – and, in comparison, just how paltry the US net feels.
