Schlafly warns Massachusetts home visit expansion echoes 1999 'Big Sister' concerns

In March 1999, Phyllis Schlafly published a column warning Americans about what she called "Big Sister"—government agents entering homes under the guise of helping families with newborns. She posed a direct question: would Americans accept this intrusion? Nearly three decades later, her daughter Anne Schlafly says that warning has become urgently relevant again, as Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey seeks $2 million to expand a nurse home-visiting program that would reach roughly 68,000 births annually, up from the current 3,000.

The expansion follows the Lindsay Clancy case, which exposed the dangers of undetected maternal mental illness. In 2023, Clancy killed her three children—Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months—in their Duxbury home. She did not dispute the killings. Her defense argued she was experiencing postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible; prosecutors countered that she knew her actions were wrong. The jury could not reach agreement, resulting in a mistrial. The case drew national attention to the gaps in maternal mental health screening and support, and it became the catalyst for Healey's push to expand Welcome Family, the state's voluntary nurse home-visiting program.

Welcome Family currently serves about 3,000 births per year. Nurses visit families shortly after childbirth to assess the health of parents and newborns, answer questions about infant care, screen for postpartum mental health concerns, and connect families with additional services. The program also advises on home safety, though the state does not specify what particular safety criteria nurses assess. In 2025 alone, Welcome Family conducted 1,620 postpartum depression screenings; 208 people screened positive, and all received referrals for services. Healey has described the expansion as an opportunity to ensure that every family with a newborn receives a health assessment within days or weeks of birth.

Anne Schlafly, chairman of Eagle Forum and Phyllis Schlafly's daughter, sees in this expansion the exact scenario her mother warned against. She told Fox News Digital that her mother was "very prescient" about government intrusion into family life. The concern, Schlafly explained, is not whether nurses can help—it is whether government agents should have access to the home at all, and whether families truly retain the power to refuse. She questioned what meaningful consent looks like for a woman who has just given birth, been through labor, and possibly been under sedation. "Is it really voluntary if you don't have true informed consent?" she asked.

Schlafly's core objection centers on the scale and character of the expansion. Hiring more nurses and deploying them to tens of thousands of homes annually, she said, amounts to a dramatic expansion of government reach into private family life. She invoked her mother's language directly: "This idea of coming in to inspect and see what's going on in your home smacks of Big Sister and Big Brother both." Massachusetts does not characterize the visits as inspections but as voluntary health and support services. Schlafly acknowledged that families who want the help should be free to accept it. Her dividing line is clear: "I think any time you make it compulsory, the line has been crossed."

Schlafly stated that the program would be acceptable only if parents could opt out at any time. Massachusetts' published materials describe participation as voluntary, but Schlafly demanded explicit clarity on parents' ability to decline visits, what information is collected, and whether that information may be shared with other state agencies. Fox News Digital reached out to Healey's office for comment on these questions but did not report receiving a response.

Phyllis Schlafly's 1999 column focused on Healthy Families America and similar home-visiting initiatives that screened families for risk factors and offered parenting guidance inside the home. She questioned whether programs officially described as voluntary would always operate that way in practice—a concern her daughter now echoes. Anne Schlafly said she believes her mother would tell Massachusetts parents to reject what she called "busybodies who want to inspect their home," and to keep government out of the kitchen table and the family castle. The debate now turns on whether the state can expand access to maternal mental health support without crossing the line into surveillance of family life.