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 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.

I know all the problems of the schools. They're rigid, they're bureaucratic, they've got a lot of problems. But it's such an important institution, and holds such promise.

The problem in child care, which really all of us are going to have to think hard on, is that there is no really great solution that we can come up with for ages zero to three.

We have to stop harming children in child care. I'm trying to make us stop. I wouldn't know what to do otherwise.

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."