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department of health and human services
Why 'Are You Going to Let Strangers Raise Your Baby?' Is the Wrong Question
What we should be asking is what would actually help families raise their children in the ways that work best for them. Unfortunately, the current administration isn't providing the answers.
Jun 09, 2026
Years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, I called my mother in a panic: I had been trying to find a childcare spot for when I planned to go back to work. But every childcare center I called had a waiting list of at least a year. I was distraught. Then my mom suddenly cut me off and asked, “Are you going to have strangers raising your baby?”
Her question stopped me short. And yet, it was also nonsensical. I was a couple of years out of law school, and had just started a career that I loved. My husband and I had mountains of student loan debt. There was no way we could afford for one of us not to work. And we lived 3,000 miles away from my parents. The only choice for us, really, was to put our daughter in childcare.
I was reminded of that moment recently when, during a news conference, Alex Adams, who leads the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the US Department of Health and Human Services, bemoaned that childcare policies in the US limit parental choices and undervalue “mothers staying home with their children during their earliest years.” This follows reporting that Adams wants a “bonfire of regulations” around childcare, and recent actions by ACF that will increase childcare costs for families and financial challenges for childcare providers. As I listened, I realized that Adams is proposing the wrong answer, just as my mother was asking me the wrong question 23 years ago. What we should be asking is what would actually help families raise their children in the ways that work best for them.
The truth is that our country is not set up to give families real choices, then or now. Families can’t survive on one salary because wages have stagnated, with the federal minimum wage frozen at a measly $7.25 for over two decades. The costs of living are skyrocketing out of reach for an increasing number of families. We are one of only a handful of countries that do not offer paid family and medical leave. Our childcare system has been chronically underfunded to the point of crisis, with families unable to access or afford care, providers operating on razor-thin profit margins, and early educators earning poverty-level wages.
The policy failures that have limited families’ choices can only be fixed by making robust public investments—not by pitting families against each other.
It bears underscoring, moreover, that families’ needs vary wildly, and they want a range of options to care for their children, including having access to high quality, affordable childcare in a variety of settings. The policy failures that have limited families’ choices can only be fixed by making robust public investments—not by pitting families against each other. Cutting care supports and slashing programs that help families afford food and healthcare, as this administration has relentlessly done since last January, is only going to limit families’ choices even further.
My mother’s question still rings in my ears all these years later, even though that baby has since graduated from college. To be clear, I was startled by the question but not surprised. My mother comes from Southeast Asia. There was little care infrastructure in her country when she was young, by which I mean there was literally no alternative for caring for children, elders, and family members who are ill or have disabilities, other than family. Her grandmother took care of her when her mother was at work. That was the model in her mind.
When my parents got married and came to the United States, my dad was the breadwinner, and my mom stayed home to care for my two sisters and me (and at one point, for my grandmother while she was undergoing cancer treatment). For her, families take care of each other; there’s no other way.
Even though this administration likes to invoke a simpler, glorified past, the reality back then was more complicated, however: Part of the reason my mom stayed home with the three of us was that my parents didn’t have great options either. My mother, the first in her family to go to college, was a teacher who supported her extended family financially in her home country.
When she came to the US, her degree and teacher’s license weren’t recognized—she couldn’t have worked in her chosen profession without going back to school. For her to work outside the home, we would have needed a second car (which my parents couldn’t afford). There were even fewer childcare options then, and we didn’t live close to my dad’s family for much of my childhood—even if we had, my grandparents had their own health issues.
My mother is also quick to point out that, even though she and my dad raised three children on one salary, it was not easy. She cut our hair and made our clothes. She pretty much cooked everything from scratch, and it didn’t look anything like Ballerina Farm. She periodically watched kids in our neighborhood after school, and did some sewing to earn extra income. She traveled to visit her family only twice in 16 years, and the second time was to help care for her dying mother.
The truth of the matter is that raising young children is hard, especially in a nation that stubbornly refuses to invest in care. I am grateful that my husband and I had help, not only from exquisitely skilled and caring “strangers,” but also my parents who visited as much as they could, my in-laws who lived nearby, and friends and neighbors. To be sure, my family has had more options and flexibility and resources than many. But all families deserve choices that enable them to care for their children according to their values and needs. In order to give families real options, we must invest real dollars in care systems, communities, and in wages and benefits that allow all families to thrive.
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RFK Jr.’s Deadly War on Science
Kennedy is not a doctor or a scientist, but he got the job as America’s top public health officer. Now he’s making the wrong choices for all of us.
Jun 06, 2025
During an NBC interview on November 6, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was cleaning up his lifelong anti-vaccination act as he lobbied to become Health and Human Services secretary in the Trump administration.
“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away,” he said. “People ought to have choice…”
Kennedy is not a doctor or a scientist, but he got the job as America’s top public health officer. Now he’s making the wrong choices for all of us.
What Happened
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) report to Kennedy. As with flu shots, the agencies have approved and recommended Covid-19 vaccines as they have been adjusted annually to deal with the evolving virus.
On May 20, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, announced a new obstacle to FDA approval of any Covid-19 vaccine. For healthy Americans under 65, it must be subjected to large scale and time-consuming clinical trials. That data will replace the prior requirement of evidence showing only an immune response, which was the basis for approving the initial “Project Warp Speed” vaccines and all subsequent boosters.
Makary and Prasad asserted that they’re merely requiring “gold-standard data on persons at low risk.” But by not requiring such randomized, placebo-controlled trials for the elderly and other high-risk groups, they’re conceding that the vaccine prevents infection.
Even trying to follow the new requirement poses problems. It’s unethical to perform a clinical study that would give some people a worthless placebo instead of a vaccine, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the University of Pennsylvania:
[W]e have a vaccine that works, given that we know that SARS-CoV2 continues to circulate and cause hospitalizations and death, and there’s no group that has no risk.
What Should Have Happened
Every year, the Advisory Committee on Immunizaton Practices to the CDC—a nonpartisan group of medical and scientific experts—considers the latest studies, data, and possible side effects of both old and new vaccines. It develops recommendations that the CDC’s director can accept, modify, or reject.
The transparent process culminates in a schedule that pediatricians throughout the country use to decide the safest and most effective ages at which to vaccinate children. Insurance companies use the CDC schedule to determine the vaccines they will cover.
Kennedy didn’t wait for the Advisory Committee. Three days after the FDA’s announcement of its new approval requirement, Kennedy posted a video on X, with Commissioner Makary at his side:
I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today the Covid-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.
The blowback from the medical community was immediate. Every week in the United States, Covid-19 still kills 300 people and hundreds more are hospitalized. It’s the fourth leading cause of death overall and in the top 10 among children. And a new strain surging in Asia has now arrived here.
On May 30, the CDC walked back Kennedy’s proclamation with an update: For children between six months and 17 years old, the CDC now recommends “shared decision-making” between the physician and the patient or patient and guardian in determining whether to get the vaccine.
Healthy adults are still off the CDC’s list. And for pregnant women—all of whom are at greater risk of Covid-19 complications—the CDC’s positions are internally contradictory. Its new schedule no longer recommends that they get vaccinated. But the CDC continues to recommend the vaccine to anyone with “underlying conditions”—one of which is pregnancy. Meanwhile newborns who depend on their vaccinated mothers for immunity have the same likelihood of hospitalization and death from Covid-19 as someone who is 70 years old.
What Happens When Republicans Fear Trump More Than Endangering Public Health
Exhaustive studies have demonstrated that the vaccine is effective across all age groups. According to data published by the National Institutes of Health—another agency that Kennedy supervises—it has prevented millions of hospitalizations and saved millions of lives.
During Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked Kennedy to acknowledge that the Covid-19 vaccine had saved millions of people.
“I don’t think anybody can say that,” Kennedy replied.
Now, as with many Trump policies, the cost of a Covid-19 vaccine will hit hardest those adults who can least afford it. But when they don’t get vaccinated, the public at large will bear the consequences.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, expressed concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. But he overcame those reservations, perhaps because Republican primary challengers on the right were already telling Louisiana voters in the upcoming election that Cassidy was insufficiently loyal to Trump. After voting to convict Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection, the Louisiana Republican Party’s executive committee censured him.
Cassidy said that he voted to confirm Kennedy only after “intense conversations” that included Kennedy’s promise to “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ recommendations without changes.”
Until Kennedy broke that promise, the decision to get a Covid-19 vaccine was an individual choice. To promote public health, the vaccine’s presence on the CDC’s guidance schedule assured that it would be free to those who wanted it.
Now, as with many Trump policies, the cost of a Covid-19 vaccine will hit hardest those adults who can least afford it. But when they don’t get vaccinated, the public at large will bear the consequences: More Americans will be hospitalized with Covid-19 and more will die.
Blame Kennedy, of course, but he is who he always has been. Trump and Senate Republicans—especially Sen. Cassidy—knew it when they gave him the job that is killing us.
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Won’t DOGE Think of the Children?
Children are bearing the brunt of upheaval in Washington; the destruction of Head Start will harm even more.
Apr 10, 2025
Children have rarely been a national priority in the United States. Lawmakers have historically chosen to set aside the needs of children, families, and educators, with Head Start being one of the few examples of meaningful investment in children’s futures. But amid recent cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, including layoffs at the Administration for Children and Families (which funds Head Start), the future of this program is uncertain.
Effectively destroying an essential program like Head Start and dismantling the Department of Education (DOE) and other federal agencies is cruel, irresponsible, and short-sighted. Childcare costs more than ever, and Head Start and Early Head Start, which provide access to high-quality early learning programs for children from low-income backgrounds, are lifelines. Without Head Start, hundreds of thousands of children will go without safe places to learn and grow. Parents, especially women, depend on it and other forms of childcare to stay in the workforce. Unless care is available, many are forced to cut hours or leave their jobs altogether, hurting household incomes and overall economic growth.
“It’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling,” Early Head Start educator Sandra Dill, who runs a family childcare program in Connecticut, said recently.
State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.
At the same time, childcare providers, including family childcare educators who run small businesses in licensed, home-based settings, are facing exorbitant and rising prices for basic supplies that they need to keep their programs running. Without much-needed funding from the federal government, many of these programs—already existing on razor-thin margins—will be at risk of shutting their doors and leaving families without care options, worsening an already dire childcare shortage.
Amid the layoffs of thousands of government employees including Head Start administrators, there will certainly be chaos and confusion in the coming weeks among programs and the families who rely on them, with a lack of understanding of how already approved funds will be distributed. This will likely be similar to what ensued amid the federal funding freeze in January, with some programs temporarily closing their doors, unable to access funding for weeks, and families going without care.
Since the pandemic, the home-based childcare educators in All Our Kin’s networks have seen a significant surge in toddlers struggling with language and learning delays. Heath and Human Services and the DOE provide critically important early intervention services, including for children aged 0 to 3. Without these programs, fewer children will have a strong start in life. More will go without healthy meals, and fewer will have opportunities for social-emotional development or be prepared to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, and will have fewer opportunities for social and emotional development. Actions to shrink these departments in the name of cost cutting could overburden states and ultimately lead to far greater societal and economic consequences.
We are encouraged by bipartisan progress at the state level. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed increased investments to help pay childcare providers competitive wages. In New York, there is a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul for additional funds to be set aside for family childcare providers to make renovations and repairs to their programs. And universal childcare has gained momentum in states like New York, Michigan, Oregon, Vermont, and New Mexico.
State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.
Every child deserves a high-quality, affordable education, especially in the critical formative years of their lives. If we want a strong economy, we must save Head Start and protect the futures of the children and programs it supports.
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