No Child Left Alone

Getting the Government Out of Parenting

Abby W. Schachter (View Bio)
Hardcover: Encounter Books, 2016.

Children are taken from their parents because they are obese. Parents are arrested for letting their children play outside alone. Sledding and swaddling are banned. From games to school to breast-feeding to daycare, the overbearing bureaucratic state keeps getting between kids and their parents.

The state’s safety, hygiene, and health regulations rule, and the government’s judgment may not coincide with yours. Which foods and drinks to send to school, what toys to buy, whether to breast- or bottle-feed babies are all choices that used to be left to you and me. Not anymore.

No Child Left Alone explores the growing problem of an intrusive, interfering government and highlights those parents—all the Captain Mommies and Captain Daddies across America—fighting to take back control over their families.

"In her new book, No Child Left Alone: Getting the Government Out of Parenting, Abby W. Schachter delves into how the federal government has been meddling in the bedrock of human society: the family…. A mother of four, Schachter speaks from personal experience as to how involved the state is in raising her own children. She discusses how other parents, who have done nothing other than raise their children in a manner in which the state does not approve, have been arrested, put on probation, or had their children taken away…. Parents can also get arrested for children becoming obese…. The book documents how, at daycares and schools, the federal government has put in regulations that infringe on the rights of parents. Schachter calls for more parents to take a stand, and her book gives many compelling examples of when the state has gone too far. Readers will be shocked and disturbed at how involved the government has become in trying to take over the job of child-rearing. Every parent—or expecting parent—should read this book to see what they are up against." — Tyler Arnold, Washington Free Beacon

"No Child Left Alone examines a number of instances where the state’s intervention has made it difficult or impossible for parents to parent they way they’d like. Each chapter tackles a different issue, ranging from breastfeeding to daycare to diet to toys, and each highlights actual parents who have fought various mandates or regulations to try to reclaim their rights. The book persuasively documents the range of encroachments upon parenting, and it effectively presents the arguments and data that support the author’s defense of parental authority. Schachter also lets many of the key players speak for themselves, enabling the reader to really understand the frustrations of parents. Though the book is intended for a broad audience, and not a scholarly one, Schachter did her homework as she uses interviews with, and studies by, experts on the various topics to support the activism of the parents she profiles…. Schachter has done a great service by collecting so many examples of government interference with parenting. One can only hope that there is enough fight in some of the victimized parents, and enough wisdom left in the Court, to reassert the longstanding rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, free from Uncle Sam’s grasping and incompetent hands." — Steven Horwitz, Library of Law and Liberty

"No Child Left Alone has surely been the most anxiety-producing read at the beach this summer. While my fellow vacationers splashed through the mass-market fiction list, I dove beneath the deep waves of bureaucratic overreach and regulatory aggression. My choice, alas, was not without its costs: As my children ran and played, I found myself keeping an eye out for the police. After all, my 3- and 5-year-olds had wandered 30 feet away from me—then 50, then 70. Would Child Protective Services swoop down like a seagull and snatch them up? Such are the thoughts any reader might have while enjoying Abby W. Schachter's timely exposé of public intrusion into private childrearing.... No Child Left Alone combines a readable tone with moral outrage at the absurdities of overbearing governance.... Schachter examines the specific interplay of family and state: of children, parents, and the 'village' doing its damnedest to get between them. Schachter's genius is for—and this book is propelled by—the perfectly chosen example…. On page after page, readers are left with the same frustrating question: How did we, an ostensibly free people, get here?" — Graham Hillard, The Weekly Standard