Twenty-seven years before Massachusetts proposed to dramatically expand a taxpayer-funded program sending nurses into the homes of families with newborns, legendary conservative firebrand and grassroots women’s leader Phyllis Schlafly posed a question that her daughter says now sounds remarkably familiar."Are the American people willing to allow government agents to come into their homes to ‘advise’ them how to care for their babies?" Schlafly wrote in a March 1999 column titled, "Watch out for ‘Big Sister’ as Well as ‘Big Brother.’" ...
For Anne Schlafly, chairman of Eagle Forum and Phyllis Schlafly’s daughter, her mother’s warning has now taken on new resonance.
"My mother was very prescient about the things that could happen if we let government intrude into our family lives," Schlafly told Fox News Digital.
President Ronald Reagan meets with American conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in the White House Oval Office in Washington, D.C., March 21, 1983. (Universal History Archive/Univer)"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," she said. "After all, the home is our castle."
Phyllis Schlafly’s 1999 column focused on Healthy Families America and similar home-visiting initiatives, warning about programs that screened families for risk factors, connected parents with health and social services and offered parenting guidance inside the home.
She also questioned whether programs officially described as "voluntary" would always operate that way in practice.
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