Public policy should support mothers who choose to stay at home

Let’s start behind a veil of ignorance, knowing nothing about the resources, abilities, or social position of your children. You must pick, based on nothing but your knowledge of a country’s economic and political system, one of the world’s 196 nations in which to bring up a family. Is the United States the country where you would choose to be a parent?

Through much of the 20th century, I suspect, the answer would have been a quick yes. But the threads of our economic system, based on an outmoded male-breadwinner model, are becoming worn. We see the strain everywhere, from …