Create Economics That Value Family

It’s been another week in the Inland Northwest, where the men are tall, the women are good-looking and all the children are above average.

Wait a minute. Make that where the parents are busy, the toddlers are contracting whooping cough and the bored 16-year-olds are exploding all over the Spokane Valley.

We’re downsized and harried here in the Inland Northwest. We’re hard-working and responsible. And we’re not paying enough attention to the needs of the children we’re raising.

This was a week not for weeping over tragedy but for asking a troubling question: Who’s minding the children?

The economic news, dominated by interest rates and corporate stock prices, often drowns out the voices of those who care most for children.

As a community, and as parents, we’re pressured to make decisions with our heads that should be made with our hearts.

American society has changed quickly. The 1950s-era families, which existed mostly on the sets of TV sitcoms anyway, have been chased away by the economy.

And in their place have come the dual-earner couples, the germ-soup day-care centers, the have-driver’s-license-will-roam teens.

We’ve patched together a haphazard, shamefully paid and loosely regulated system of child care in the last three decades. We did the best we could, given the speed of change and the extent of our knowledge.

But now, after a week of feeling frightened, either for or by our children, it’s time to ask: Can’t we do any better than this?

We can. Companies can design career tracks that equitably compensate parents while providing respect, flexibility and support for the difficult roles parents balance. Parents can work harder to give prime-time energy to their children.

We can write family sick leave policies that make certain that children aren’t shuttled to the day-care center on the days they’re contagious and in need of comfort.

We can start after-school programs that organize and recognize teens for community service as avidly as we do for athletics. Teaching preschoolers extra choruses to “The Wheels On the Bus” or delivering a chicken dinner to an elderly grandparent could not only ward off latch-key loneliness, but also provide a healthy sense of contribution.

These treasures that are our children belong to the entire community.

We can design economics of the heart, a discipline that provides nurturing, firmness and support for all children and does so with the same zeal Alan Greenspan applies to growth of the money-based economy.

We must value our children’s future capacity for trust, confidence and compassion as we value long-term prosperity. Golden.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely/For the editorial board