Excerpts
As the Trump administration meets with advocates who want to reverse declining birthrates — a cause that Mr. Vance has embraced — proposals for more robust, federally funded child care have been noticeably absent from the discussions.
Instead, the White House has pursued reductions. The Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, eliminated many positions in offices that help fund day care for low-income families, including at Head Start — part of broader cost cutting efforts led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
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The effort is part of a broader social agenda being pursued by the Trump administration and its allies to promote a very specific idea of what constitutes a family — with a married mother and father who have as many children as possible, a concept that leaves out many families that do not conform to traditional structures or gender roles.
Studies are inconclusive on whether children do better when they spend most days with a parent, rather than a paid professional. Results are largely dependent on the relative quality of the care the child receives at a day care center, and the care the child receives at home.
Regardless, many American families rely on two incomes to make ends meet. Almost 65 percent of mothers in two-parent households with at least one child under 18 work outside of the home, a number that has risen dramatically over the last 50 years. At the same time, the cost of child care has skyrocketed, averaging over $11,000 per child a year, as of 2023, with families in many major cities paying more than double that amount.
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Conservative advocates and politicians, when discussing the issue, generally do not specify which parent could choose to stay home with the children. But more than 80 percent of stay-at-home parents are women — and some advocates are open about the fact that they see benefits to a mother filling that role.
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An expanded child tax credit on its own also fails to address the critical day care shortage across the country, said Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University who writes about parenting. Child care programs, which operate on an extremely thin profit margin, need government subsidies to survive and provide high-quality care, Ms. Oster said.
By failing to subsidize day care, and by just giving more cash to families, she added, “we’re just giving people money without thinking about the supply side.”
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