Murthy predictably uses his platform to call for a further expansion of the government bloat already inflated by the annual $2 trillion deficits under President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris. And even when discussing parental loneliness, Murthy laughably refuses to use the words “marriage” or “spouse” even once. He instead pointed out that the less lonely and anxious parents often have the “support of a committed co-parent, extended family, and friends.”

But Murthy is correct in diagnosing that there is a problem on a number of fronts. Feelings of stress and loneliness and the demonstrable cost of living have both increased for parents and non-parents since before the pandemic and as Murthy does not, parents indeed report far more stress than non-parents. But the fatal flaw of Murthy’s report is not just that he ignores the reality that study after study shows that married parents are far less lonely and anxious than those without “co-parents.” In reality, before the government could (or should) use our $35 trillion national debt to fund social services that wouldn’t actually ameliorate the problem, both Uncle Sam and the Nanny State of public health authorities need to first do no harm.

The most obvious way in which this unholy alliance violated the Hippocratic tenant was in its disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the primary victims of school closures were the children who have since reported catastrophic levels of learning loss, emotional immaturity, and explosions in mental health crises, parents were, by extension, demonstrably harmed in the process.

One study found that in zip codes with more draconian or lengthier school closures, alcohol sales were up 2%, and maternal use of antidepressants was up another 1.5%. Another study found that during the peak of the pandemic, more than a quarter of parents reported problematic levels of alcohol abuse, with men self-medicating at even higher rates than women.

The liberal Brookings Institution also found that more stringent school closures disproportionately harmed the careers of women, a problem that was likely compounded by the worst inflation crisis in 40 years wrought by the fiscal policy of Murthy’s bosses, Biden and Harris. Three years into the 20% price hike of Bidenomics, the respondents of the 2023 American Family Survey reported that inflation was their single largest financial stressor and the cost of raising a family is the single greatest challenge to families as a whole. Even though the pandemic is over, its cumulative effects will likely persist for decades.

But even excluding “COVIDiocy,” public health dictat continues to encourage maximizing parental stress for the most minimal, if not non-existent, gains in the health and safety of their children. In no way is this more exemplified than the canard, which is the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative.

Backed by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the government, the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is better understood as the Mom Unfriendly Guilting Initiative. The purpose of the BFHI is to maximize, inconvenience, cajole, and shame the number of mothers who breastfeed their babies after giving birth. The BFHI, which is explicitly endorsed by the surgeon general and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, instructs hospitals not to offer baby formula to a newborn “unless medically indicated,” not to advertise formula or provide free formula at all to mothers, to “facilitate” and “initiate breastfeeding as soon as possible after birth,” and “to practice rooming-in 24 hours a day.”

So what happens when you guilt exhausted postpartum mothers into supplying 24-hour care and nourishment to their newborn immediately after undergoing the marathon of childbirth? Studies show the BHFI results in an increased risk of newborns falling off beds, Sudden Unexpected Postnatal Collapse Risk, an acute condition that kills 50% of the infants it afflicts, suffocation, hospital readmission within 30 days of the baby’s birth, and infant starvation and dehydration, all of which obviously could be avoided or the risk minimized if the baby gets a formula. (Also note that in the midst of the 2022 baby formula shortage, the Office of the United States Trade Representative refused to lift formula tariffs in service of the domestic dairy industry.)

And what about the parents? The internet is littered with thousands of anecdotes of mothers and fathers alike who deplored their BFHI experiences, and ironically enough, a peer-reviewed study found that early formula assistance actually increases breastfeeding success by alleviating stress among mothers struggling to produce. But the government’s obsession goes beyond a few days in the hospital. The guidance of the CDC is that infants receive any formula at all for six months and, deferring to public health officials at the American Academy of Pediatrics, that toddlers are breastfed until they’re two years old — or older.

As demonstrated by a now-famous review by Emily Oster, there is next to no solid data backing up claims about breastfeeding’s long-term influence on IQ, obesity, or basically anything else for babies into childhood and adulthood. There is a decent amount of data indicating breastfeeding causes a lower incidence of allergic rashes, gastrointestinal disorders, necrotizing enterocolitis, and maybe ear infections for the first six months of an infant’s life and reduces the risk of cancer for mothers.

But despite the fact that all available evidence shows that breastmilk is no better than formula for babies beyond mild or rare risks in the first six months of life, the government’s guilt trip over breastfeeding children until they’re walking and talking is such that the HHS, after “considerations of equity and cultural norms,” now encourages even HIV-positive mothers to exclusively breastfeed, while the CDC now says that post-op transgender women (read: biological men) can “chestfeed” with medication to induce lactation despite the Food and Drug Administration’s warning that the medication in question poses risks to the patient trying to induce lactation. Beyond the lack of benefit for babies, studies found that breastfeeding limits women’s ability to socialize, making them lonelier, which is the exact problem the surgeon general claims to be opposing.

This sort of stress-maximizing guidance with limited data to support such recommendations persists throughout parenthood. In another now-famous study, “Carseats as Contraception,” Jordan Nickerson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and David Solomon of Boston College found that an ever-expanding list of state car seat mandates prevented just 57 car crash fatalities while discouraging 8,000 births in 2017. And while the ostensibly urbanist Left may extol the virtues of embracing a car-free lifestyle, the same left-wing jurisdictions often make that impossible.

For example, Illinois state law bans teens as old as 13 from being unsupervised for any period of time, including at home, let alone walking to the bus stop. Even if Democratic jurisdictions didn’t occasionally arrest parents for allowing their competent children to walk to those bus stops, severely restrictive zoning laws often prevent families from affording to live there. Redfin found that only 14% of neighborhoods are affordably priced and walkable with good public schools.

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The result? Nearly half of all parents in a 2017 survey said coordinating their children’s transportation at the beginning of the school year stresses them out, and a third said they spend more than five hours per week driving their children around. Another third of parents polled by the University of Michigan said parents worried about their children’s safety at school drop-offs, specifically because of car traffic.

Before any government has to pass a single spending bill, the USTR could lift pricy formula tariffs and actually cut spending by defunding the millions of taxpayer dollars given to the BFHI each year. State governments could relax superfluous car seat requirements and override onerous local zoning laws. Local jurisdictions could better connect more densely populated housing to quality public schools and, of course, never, ever be allowed to let those schools close again. From top to bottom, the government doesn’t have to spend more of our money, but it can get out of the way of the parents who will advance the interests of their children the best.