I teach child development and social policy as an undergraduate course, and I tell my students, "Look, on any of these issues, if you don't want to work on it for thirty years, don't start."

I thought the whole idea of being a conservative was to keep the government from messing around in people's lives. And yet they say the government should be getting into people's families. That's messing pretty heavily where I come from.

I don't think child care is ever going to be much of a federal effort. Just like education. Six or 7 percent - that's all I want from the government. Pay that piece of it for poor or developmentally disabled children.

You win what you can win when you can win it, and keep pushing - all the time. And that's how this game is played. And I'll play it till I can't play it anymore.

I study children, and they're my subjects in my studies. They're my colleagues, really, all these little kids. And I owe them.

I don't think anything good is happening. I think we're paying the price for it. I think while crime in general is going down, youth crime is going up. I think mental health problems of the youth are going up. You can't show causality. It's a hard stretch.

I guess if you're doing God's work, whatever you do is in His name.