One of the best ways to support families and new parents is income splitting.
Allow couples with at least 1 dependent child to file joint tax returns, significantly reducing their joint taxable income if one partner earns significantly more than the other.
I started reading this and was immediately reminded of the scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams' character is telling Will about his wife, who'd recently died of cancer. He was talking about her imperfections, the little things that only he knew about β like how she'd sometimes fart in her sleep and wake herself up.
"People call these things imperfections," he said. "But they're not. Ah, that's the good stuff. That's what made her my wife."
It's a great scene. I'm not sure I have a point in bringing it up, other than to say that maybe optimizing everything in your life just to live a little longer might just result in missing out on some things that matter more β and not by a small margin.