Published August 14, 2024
Never let a crisis to go to waste” is an unofficial slogan of progressives looking to remake America’s social safety net. If a crisis is not forthcoming, no matter; apocalyptic rhetoric and a compliant media can manifest one.
Thus, a crisis always looms over childcare, threatening American families. “If the Republicans have their way, more than 3 million babies will lose their childcare,” Senator Elizabeth Warren warned last year as COVID-era federal funding expired. Not only have those dire predictions failed to materialize, trends moved in the opposite direction; 68.9% of moms with young kids were in the labor force in 2023, an all-time high.
Rising wages, remote work, and tight labor markets have helped pull workers off the sidelines; this includes parents of young children. And across America, families are making childcare work—without the billions of dollars of subsidies envisioned by progressive advocates. Three-quarters of parents tell federal surveys they have good choices in their choice of childcare. And about 40% of families with young kids don’t have any kind of regular childcare arrangement, preferring a stay-at-home parent or balancing care between parents and relatives.
For families that rely on paid childcare, policymakers can doubtless do a better job of expanding the choices available to them. But understanding the correct policy approach starts with understanding the problem, and what current policy approaches get right or wrong. Bipartisan proposals to subsidize demand by expanding tax credits for childcare approach the problem backward. Instead, policymakers should seek to support all families with young kids in an egalitarian manner, with some innovation and experimentation in boosting the supply side of the childcare equation.
The Actual Problem to Solve
As with many labor-intensive services, price increases have been sharper in childcare than other sectors of the economy. About half of families utilize at least some regular paid or center-based care, and the costs can get inarguably hefty. A family in a large urban area looking for full-time care for their newborn will spend, on average, about $17,170 per year, according to data compiled by the Department of Labor. But prices vary by type of care, region, and a child’s age. A family in a rural area using home-based care for their preschooler will face less than half the bill of the city-dwellers with a newborn.
The cost can be a huge burden to low-income families, especially single parents. Ever since the 1990s, public policy has sent households headed by a single parent a clear message about the importance of participation in the labor force; for them, targeted childcare assistance makes sense. That is not the same, however, as creating a middle-class entitlement out of the purportedly widespread desire for full-time, center-based childcare. Polling and analysis by American Compass, the Institute for Family Studies, the Bipartisan Policy Center, my own work at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and more stress that parents’ preferences are more complicated than one-size-fits-all approaches from D.C.
To a first degree of approximation, the families expressing a preference for full-time childcare, like a center or nanny, tend to be headed by college-educated parents, especially dual-career couples. Other families, particularly where parents do not have college degrees and work in less prestigious jobs, want part-time or late-night care; some, like the parents of Senator Warren and Senator JD Vance, turn to relatives; some have a strong preference for home-based or faith-based providers. Many make the choice to have a stay-at-home parent.
One factor is a family’s ability to pay. The amount spent on childcare expenses among low-income families that pay for care can surpass one-third of household income. For families making six figures, by contrast, the median share of household income spent on childcare is around 7%. But much of the preference gap is also due to the difference in how parents of different socioeconomic classes see their work—as a “job,” rather than as a “career.” For some parents, paid childcare is essential to their career trajectory; for others, it’s a stopgap while they put in the extra hours to make ends meet.
A 2022 survey of working parents from the Bipartisan Policy Center found, “parents are satisfied with their informal childcare arrangements, and most say formal childcare arrangements are unappealing to them…[even if they were] free and in a convenient location.” New York City, a national posterchild for universal childcare, has had to scale back plans for expansion because nearly one-third of its seats went unfilled; largely in the poorest and most racially diverse parts of the city.
Thus, any approach to childcare should reflect the reality that parents’ preferences vary across race, education, income, and their child’s age. Universal programs flatten those distinctions and privilege those whose preferences most closely mirror whatever policymakers presume to be the norm—typically, those most like the Acela Corridor types making policy decisions, or the professional activists lobbying them. The result is also to create the expectation that every parent should be taking advantage of universal pre-kindergarten or other forms of center-based care for young children. Supporting families with young children should include some form of material assistance while empowering them to make the decision right for them, rather than presuming one model or another deserves public support.
Click here to continue reading.
Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work with the Life and Family Initiative focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.
