There is a line in the economist Nate G. Hilger’s new book “The Parent Trap” that reads: “Parents are doing something much harder and more important than commonly understood.”

Any parent who has slogged through the two years of the pandemic understands that at a core level, parents are being asked to do too much. But Hilger, who lives in Redwood City with his wife and son, defines this sense of being overwhelmed explicitly, describing how the demands of modern parenting have stretched far beyond caregiving, which most parents are pretty good at, to include child skill building.

Not only is this role not as intuitive as caregiving (as a parenting journalist who still struggles to implement all the expert advice I get with my own children, I can attest to this), but access to child-development knowledge is uneven. For highly educated parents who have resources and networks where they can find the right tutors or specialists or experts, child skill building is still very hard work, but for parents without those opportunities, it is infinitely harder. Hilger also notes that for historically disadvantaged minorities who were prohibited from pursuing certain careers and educational opportunities, those obstacles to skill building reverberate today.

So what can we do about this? “The Parent Trap” makes the fascinating argument that instead of pouring so much energy into our K-12 public education system, where children are experiencing a relatively equal learning environment (gaps between schools in more affluent versus less affluent districts definitely exist, but federal funding for high-need schools has helped to close them), we should focus on the time outside of school, where inequality in terms of access to opportunity is far more radical.

The Chronicle spoke to Hilger about child development, his vision on how we can better support families and how parents can gain more political power.

Q: Early on in “The Parent Trap” you write, “Many parents can’t do some very hard stuff that kids need to thrive as adults, and that’s OK.” Can you discuss this idea and why it’s central to the argument you make in your book?

A: We have taught ourselves to view child development as a relatively easy and instinctual activity, and it isn’t. A more accurate view is it’s like a difficult professional occupation, like law or medicine or construction, and it’s very hard to do it without training and experience. We have to stop expecting parents to carry this monumental burden of child skill building in their spare time, with their own budget, largely in isolation. We should not expect this any more than we should expect them to build their own houses or fly their own airplanes.

Nate G. Hilger is the author of “The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis.”Photo: Erin Ashford

Q: Can you talk more about the difference between parental caregiving and skill building?

A: We need a new language to talk about parenting because there are two realities.

The vast majority of parents are very good at caregiving — loving and nurturing their children and meeting their needs. That’s the side of parenting that is accessible and instinctual, and it provides profound value to children.

The other side of parenting is skill development — developing skills like critical thinking, creativity, time and money management, conflict resolution, and many more which children will need to succeed — which is not something you get from just caring for your child. It’s more professional and clinical, and it requires management of very complex, conflicted creatures; navigating different bureaucracies; and distinguishing true and false claims with data and evidence. It’s not something that parents can easily do.

Q: How would your Familycare policy proposal you discuss in the book help with this?

A: Familycare acknowledges that families shouldn’t be expected to scrounge up child care and skill development early in life, the same way Medicare acknowledges that the elderly shouldn’t be expected to scrounge up health care later in life. It would provide universal access to high-quality early childhood education environments, access to after-school and summer programs for K-12 children, and it would pay professionals to help parents navigate complex systems, like applying to college.

We build enormous byzantine structures around opportunity and then make parents feel bad when they don’t have the tools to get over those walls. Families can’t become experts in the education system, health care system and college overnight. They need more support.

And these services would pay for themselves because they benefit children’s future productivity and reduce costs associated with crime, teen pregnancy, remedial education and health care.

Q: How does unequal access to skill building affect college acceptance?

A: This is the side of parenting that starts to look like parenting mistakes; if attending a college or vocational school improves outcomes so dramatically, why aren’t more parents making sure their kids go to college? It’s because we set up our college system in America like a moat around a castle.

To give just one example, the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) — the required document to get financial aid — is over a hundred questions long, very complex and asks parents for a lot of sensitive information. For many families, it’s a brick wall, especially since whatever aid (they may qualify for) isn’t known until after a student applies. Kids are doing this fraught process without any clear idea about where they can afford to go. Recent research has shown this wreaks havoc on lower-income children’s college prospects.

Q: Can you lay out your vision for how parents can claim more political power, similar to the AARP?

A: In order to create a political organization with nonpartisan mass participation, we need a culture shift among parents.

Parents have much larger shared interests than they have disagreements, but our K-12 culture wars distract from that. Disagreements over how to teach about race in our K-12 system, or sex, or whether kids should pray, or the exact role of charter schools are important debates, but they must stop distracting parents from their much larger shared interests and policy priorities.

It’s almost as if everyone over 65 was tricked into fighting over the role of religion at end of life rather than Medicare and Social Security. I want parents to realize how much the system could realistically change with more public support.

The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis
By Nate G. Hilger
(MIT Press; 304 pages; $29.95)