‘Big Sister’ warning resurfaces as Massachusetts expands home visits after Clancy trial
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.’"
The warning resurfaced as Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey seeks $2 million to expand the state’s Welcome Family program, which offers nurse visits following childbirth. The program serves approximately 3,000 births annually, and the expansion is intended to make visits available following roughly 68,000 births statewide per year.
The push comes in the aftermath of the Lindsay Clancy case, which put a searing spotlight on maternal mental illness. Clancy does not dispute that she killed her three young children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — inside their Duxbury home in 2023.
Clancy's defense argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible, while prosecutors argued she knew her actions were wrong. The jury deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial.
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.
"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.
Massachusetts today describes Welcome Family as voluntary. Nurses assess the health of the "parents and caregivers" and newborn, answer questions about newborn care, screen for postpartum mental health concerns and connect families with additional services.
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Notably, Massachusetts lists "ensuring that your home is safe" among the subjects Welcome Family nurses may advise parents about, though the program’s family information page does not specify particular home safety criteria.
The state has called Welcome Family an "entry point into the system of care" for families with newborns. Healthy Families America, the program at the center of Schlafly’s 1999 column, is also among the models Massachusetts lists within its broader Home Visiting Initiative, though it is separate from Welcome Family.
Healey described her vision for the expansion in broader terms during an interview on Boston Public Radio.
"Everybody in the state, when you have a baby, you’re going to have a home visit within days, weeks, and that will be an opportunity for a healthcare provider to make an assessment to see if you need some additional support and resources," Healey said.
Anne Schlafly questioned what meaningful consent looks like shortly after childbirth.
"Is it really voluntary if you don’t have true informed consent?" Schlafly said. "If you have just given birth, you’ve been in labor, you’ve been under sedation, can you really recognize what you were signing up for supposedly on a voluntary basis?
"I think mothers need to have the full disclosure that this would be a government agent in the home."
The scale of the proposed expansion also concerns Schlafly.
"If government is going to expand their reach and hire a whole bunch of more people and use taxpayer money to send out all these agents to the families, I mean, that’s quite an expansion," she said. "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.
State officials point to results from the existing program. In 2025, Welcome Family offered 1,620 postpartum depression screenings, with 208 positive screenings. The state says every person who screened positively received a referral for services.
Schlafly said she does not object to families choosing to accept that help.
"If people want to have this help from Governor Healey, then they can avail themselves of it," she said.
Her dividing line, she said, is whether parents retain the ability to refuse.
"I think any time you make it compulsory, the line has been crossed," Schlafly said. "I would say the only way that this Massachusetts program could be acceptable is if the parents could opt out at any time."
Massachusetts’ published materials describe participation as voluntary.
Fox News Digital reached out to Healey’s office for comment and clarification about parents’ ability to decline visits, information collected during visits and whether information may be shared with other state agencies.
Nearly three decades after her mother warned about "Big Sister" entering the family home, Schlafly said she believes she knows what her mother would tell Massachusetts parents today.
"There’s no doubt that Phyllis Schlafly would advise parents to reject busybodies who want to inspect their home," she said. "The home is a sacred and private area, and Governor Healey has no business in the homes of Massachusetts parents.
"Let’s leave her to the state house and not the kitchen table."