Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced this week that the state will invest $2 million in taxpayer funds to expand its Welcome Family program. Like most states, the program currently offers a one-time home visit from a nurse a few weeks after a baby is born. The nurse assesses the health of the mother and baby, the condition of the home, and the quality of support from family members. Governor Healey’s expansion, however, is more of a mandate.
In a radio interview, she stated:
Everybody in the state, when you have a baby, you’re going to have a home visit within days, weeks and that will be an opportunity for a healthcare provider to make an assessment to see if you need some additional support and resources.
Yes, moms are cringing everywhere. Any woman who has given birth understands the complexities of navigating new or recurrent motherhood in those first few weeks postpartum. She may want family and friends coming in and out to help around the house and hold the new baby. Or she may prefer solitude as she cherishes those intimate first moments with her newborn. And her preferences may change from one day — or even one hour — to the next. Between learning to breastfeed, responding to her baby’s needs, attending multiple doctors’ appointments, recovering from childbirth, and finding time for basic necessities like showering and eating, the postpartum period can be overwhelming. Yet, throughout history, women have drawn on their own strength, intuition, and support systems to navigate these challenges while forming profound and often unexplainable bonds with their babies. Why add another obligation to an already demanding period of life, particularly one that could subject a new mother to the judgment of a government bureaucrat following a one-size-fits-all model of what motherhood should look like?
Governor Healey’s actions may be a reaction to a recent sensationalized Massachusetts murder where a woman named Lindsay Clancy claimed to experience postpartum psychosis and tragically killed her three young children. This is an extreme situation that not even an in-home visit could have prevented. Clancey was already seeing a therapist, taking anxiety and depression medications, and getting support from her husband and parents. While she would have possibly been deemed “at risk,” she was also already connected to the resources that Welcome Family offers. No need to punish all new moms with government monitoring based on 0.1% of the population who experience this type of psychosis.
Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly spoke out against these types of intrusive in-home visits decades ago. In 1999, she highlighted the voluntary Healthy Families America (HFA) program in various states similar to Massachusetts’s Welcome Family program. She framed these programs as a “pervasive liberal push to monitor law-abiding citizens under the pretext of catching criminals.”
During that time, the Alabama Family Alliance published an investigative report examining how mothers could be classified as “at risk” based on a list of 15 factors, including the mother’s age, marital status, or timing of prenatal care. Such criteria could allow programs to identify mothers deemed vulnerable and subject them to increased government involvement and scrutiny. But what happens when a mother becomes uncomfortable with the questions and asks the program to stop? Could her refusal to participate be interpreted as a sign of a mental health concern rather than a simple exercise of her right to decline?
Phyllis Schlafly’s daughter and Chair of Eagle Forum Anne Schlafly Carpenter echoed her mother’s sentiments to Fox News this week. She said:
My mother was very prescient about the things that could happen if we let government intrude into our family lives. Her point was a government agent, or an agent of the government has no business in your home, in your castle, snooping around and determining whether or not you’re raising the children the way the government wants you to raise the children. After all, the home is our castle.
The World Health Organization (WHO) could not resist some big government oversight as well. The same authoritarian organization that recommends a slew of vaccine mandates and advocates for abortion has recommended that in-home or outpatient visits begin to occur within the first day of the mother giving birth. Then, follow-up visits should occur within 48-72 hours, 1-2 weeks, and during the 6th week after birth. Ironically, their own findings show that this offers little to no help for mothers and babies.
There is no question that in extremely rare cases, extreme interventions might be necessary, but all mothers should not be investigated by the watchful eye of the government. Allowing mothers the time to bond with their children after birth, figure out schedules that work best for their family, and not force women into one-size-fits-all government programs is the healthiest way to form strong families. As Phyllis said, “Watch out for ‘Big Sister’ as well as ‘Big Brother.’”
