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 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'm really not a partisan political person. I remember when I was in Washington they kept trying to get me to say whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. I just said, my politics are children. That's all I know anything about.

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."

So there's much more to life than one's intelligence score. To be a decent human being. To have some character.

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.

It's also the environment that determines a considerable part of the growth and development of children.