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families
Providers, Parents Strike Nationwide in 'Day Without Childcare' to Demand Universal Program
"It's hard sometimes in our current political climate to imagine, but I think it's more important than ever for us to be imagining, because families cannot continue to be squeezed like this," said one advocate.
May 11, 2026
With the Trump administration announcing changes to federal childcare programs on Monday that advocates said would worsen the affordability crisis, the grassroots organizing group Community Change Action said President Donald Trump's attacks on the industry have made the push for a universal care system more urgent than ever as thousands of providers and parents joined the "Day Without Childcare" nationwide action.
"As families face a worsening affordability crisis and childcare costs are outpacing rent, providers have been shouldering the burden," said Community Change Action. "We can’t wait a second longer to create the universal childcare system we deserve—one that actually works, lifts the burden off of families and providers, and invests in our youngest generation to give them the strongest start possible."
The group said families and daycare providers are participating in at least 75 actions, including one-day center closures, across 28 states in its fifth annual Day Without Childcare (DWOCC)—an event that it said would "launch the nationwide campaign that will win universal childcare."
Events planned for Monday include a rally at the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton; a gathering of childcare providers and parents during working hours in Yakima, Washington; lobbying visits to state representatives in California; and an early closure of People's Day Care in Gary, Indiana in solidarity with programs that have had to shut down "due to Indiana's choice to not fund early care and learning."
According to Meredith Loomis Quinlan, childcare lead for Community Change Action, more than 3,000 parents and providers around the country had committed to going on strike for the day.
In January, the Trump administration initiated a funding freeze targeting all states in what it said was a response to "fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country." The attack came after a right-wing influencer posted a video of a Somali-owned daycare center in Minnesota and accused its owners of fraud at the behest of Republican lawmakers. A small number of members of the state's Somali community were charged with defrauding the state's social services system.
The White House later said it would slash $10 billion in childcare funding for five Democratic-led states—an attempt that was blocked by a federal court last month.
And as families joined childcare providers and advocates on Monday to demand universal care with fair wages for providers, Trump was announcing changes to the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) that officials said would put "parents back in charge"—but would actually eliminate a 2024 rule that capped childcare copayments at 7% of household income for low-income families, according to analysts.
Loomis Quinlan told Common Dreams that the changes to CCDF will also end requirements that "direct services be provided through grants or contracts and [will pay] childcare providers in advance for their services," as well as "requiring payment based on enrollment rather than actual attendance."
"Every one of those things is a direct attack on our childcare system," said Loomis Quinlan. "And they're trying to frame it as advancements. But it is absolutely not that. These rules are... not going to make childcare more affordable. They're not going to make sure that childcare providers are paid on time with consistency."
The administration's cuts and regulatory changes have come as families across the US are already facing rising grocery prices linked to the president's tariff policies, gas prices have surpassed $4.50 per gallon due to the US-Israeli war on Iran, and the White House's policies have worsened the already existing housing affordability crisis.
A report by Care.com found in 2024 that the average US family with young children was spending 24% of their income on childcare.
"Having this really big childcare bill for families is just untenable," Loomis Quinlan said. "And on the flip side, we know that the childcare providers are not making much in take-home pay, averaging around $14 an hour. And so they also aren't able to make ends meet."
Community Change Action emphasized that while attacking childcare centers' ability to keep their doors open, the Trump administration is also taking direct aim at many providers, more than 20% of whom are immigrants, through its mass deportation agenda. In Chicago last November, federal agents raided a daycare center and arrested a teacher in what one angry parent called an act of "domestic terrorism."
"We’ve had our funds frozen, violent armed ICE agents show up at our childrens’ safe spaces and our places of work, and our Black and Brown communities scapegoated," said the group, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "It’s time to take bold, sustained action that starts with this year’s DWOCC."
Loomis Quinlan said that while the Trump administration is waging war on the childcare sector, progressive leaders like New York City Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani are making strides toward securing a universal childcare program for all families in the US. Mamdani joined forces with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, to fund a universal childcare program for the city earlier this year.
"We really feel like it's a moment to be clear about what families and providers need, which is a universal childcare program in this country," she told Common Dreams. "We need more investment, not less. Deregulating isn't the answer. The changes to the programs announced today by the Trump administration are not the answer. What we need, what we're organizing for today, is universal childcare."
Under the universal program proposed by the group, childcare providers would be paid "a wage that enables their own families to thrive, receive healthcare, paid leave, retirement, and other benefits, and be compensated on par with educators in their state’s K-12 system." It would also invest public resources to cover the true cost of care and professional development of the workforce, and protect against corporate profiteering.
Progressive US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has long advocated for a universal program, which he's said should be funded by taxing the wealth of the top 0.1% richest Americans.
Loomis Quinlan emphasized that once a publicly funded universal childcare system is a reality, "it's going to be so evident that this is something we always should have had in this country."
"Can you imagine what it felt like when we were setting up the K-12 public education system in this country?" she said. "People probably thought that this was just 'pie in the sky.' And here we are, we have a great public education system in this country."
"It's hard sometimes in our current political climate to imagine, but I think it's more important than ever for us to be imagining, because families cannot continue to be squeezed like this," said Loomis Quinlan. "We need to start envisioning what it really looks like for our country to set families and kids up to prosper and thrive."
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Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Unhoused Families Are Being Ignored
Local politicians don’t see advantage in tackling a crisis that is hidden from view. So, it is up to the rest of us to step up.
Aug 15, 2025
Our eviction court clients do not want US President Donald Trump’s attention. Nor the Supreme Court’s, for that matter. But they would appreciate it if the rest of us took notice.
Last month, Trump issued a heinous executive order pushing for the arrest of individuals engaged in “urban camping and loitering.” Trump’s order followed on the equally callous 2024 Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which gave the legal green light for imprisoning people just because they are forced to live outdoors.
The Grants Pass decision opened the floodgates for state and local governments to destroy homeless encampments and make arrests for the crime of being unhoused.
Fortunately, many people have responded to these heartless attacks with both compassion and action. They lift up the proven success of Housing First programs that address the core need for a safe place to live, which then allows for other needs to be addressed effectively too. Sometimes, politicians and business leaders help—even when they seem to be motivated mostly by a desire to rid the city sidewalks and neighborhoods of unsightly displays of unhoused suffering.
When Trump and others label homelessness as largely caused by addiction or mental health issues, they have the causation arrow pointed in the wrong direction.
All good. Our sisters and (mostly) brothers in the streets and encampments deserve housing and dignity.
But, beyond the demonizing and harassment directed to visibly unhoused people, there is another deeply damaging outcome from all this political, media, and advocacy attention: Unhoused families are being ignored.
Thanks to the research of Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, we have long known that children are the most common demographic among the 7.6 million people who face eviction each year. That means our clients usually don’t look like the stereotypical single man on a downtown street corner or huddled under an overpass. But they need help just as much.
Consider our clients Kevin and Samantha and their infant daughter (I will not use clients’ real names), who each night squeeze themselves in to sleep in their 2011 Ford Focus. Just finding a place to park is a nightly challenge. Walmart security guards and park police pound on their windows and shine flashlights in their faces, waking the baby and kicking them out of parking lots.
Depending on the season, they have to run the car engine several hours of the night just to keep some heat or cooling going. Sleep is hard to come by in their cramped quarters, especially while keeping an eye out for police and attackers.
Since Kevin and Samantha take turns watching the baby while the other one works a shift at a fast-food restaurant, they often arrive early for their shifts. That way, they can take the baby into the restaurant bathroom and try to bathe as the best they can.
Tonya and her two children spent hundreds of dollars on rental application fees, only to be turned down each time because of a past eviction filing. For awhile, they bedded down on the floor of Tonya’s sister’s apartment. But the sister’s landlord threatened eviction for packing eight people into a two-bedroom unit.
So, when Tonya’s meager home healthcare wages allow it, she pays $75 for a night in a motel. The room is dirty—she won’t let her youngest crawl on the crunchy brown carpeting—and the parking lot is filled with loud, frightening people. But the motel doesn’t check tenant records, and it beats the alternative. On the nights Tonya cannot afford the motel fee, she and the kids sleep in the car.
Shelters Full; So is Subsidized Housing
Each morning, Samantha and Tonya call the handful of local shelters that accept families and ask if there are beds available. The answer is almost always no. After that, there is nowhere else to call. Subsidized housing for families has years-long waiting lists, which means 3 of every 4 households eligible for subsidized housing are out of luck.
These families are sometimes referred to as the hidden homeless. Parents with children avoid the streets and encampments not just for safety reasons: Allowing their kids to be seen unhoused can trigger a call to child welfare agencies. Unhoused families staying out of sight is a big reason why the official homelessness count is widely acknowledged as being far too low, especially when it comes to child homelessness.
Volunteers and professionals conducting the annual Housing and Urban Development “Point in Time” count do their best, but you can’t tally what you can’t see. That means that communities’ homeless counts sometimes fail to include almost any children at all, despite the fact a recent report by SchoolHouse Connection and the University of Michigan revealed that nearly a half-million infants and toddlers were homeless during the studied years of 2022 and 2023. For pre-K to grade 12 students, the number was 1.37 million. For context, that means the total number of kids experiencing homelessness in the US over the course of just two years is significantly larger than the entire population of the city of Philadelphia.
Living wages, childcare guarantees, and affordable housing—especially affordable housing—would shut down our eviction courts and empty out homeless family shelters.
When Trump and others label homelessness as largely caused by addiction or mental health issues, they have the causation arrow pointed in the wrong direction. For our clients and the majority of those who are unhoused, their main problem is not mental health. They simply cannot afford their rent. But their housing struggle definitely leads to health crises: Multiple studies have shown that evictions and homelessness contribute to children’s mental illnesses, respiratory conditions, infections, delayed cognitive development, and difficulties in school and social settings.
Donald Trump is not paying attention to this. Downtown business leaders are unconcerned. Local politicians don’t see advantage in tackling a crisis that is hidden from view.
So, it is up to the rest of us to step up.
The solutions are not hard to find. Families living without shelter is unthinkable in other nations, as it largely was in earlier generations here in the United States. Living wages, childcare guarantees, and affordable housing—especially affordable housing—would shut down our eviction courts and empty out homeless family shelters.
To get there, we first have to pay attention to the families of Kevin, Samantha, Tonya, and the million-plus other kids and parents who don’t know where they are going to sleep tonight.
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Economic Anxiety of Americans Surges Under Trump: Poll
"The president promised to lower costs on day one, and by that standard, he's broken that promise and has made choices that will cost families thousands of dollars a year," said one policy expert recently.
May 12, 2025
The Trump administration has made its desire for Americans to expand their families well known, but a new survey out Monday details how a growing number of people are postponing such major life decisions—including having children, buying a home, or expanding their education—due to the economic anxiety created by President Donald Trump's policies.
The Harris poll was conducted on behalf of The Guardian between April 24-26, in the wake of the news that the White House was considering multiple ways to encourage people to have more children. The proposals being floated by "pronatalist" advisers include a $5,000 "baby bonus" that the administration would offer to people when they have a new baby—which would cover less than half of the average annual cost of childcare in the United States.
The survey suggested that the proposal was not enticing to would-be parents in the U.S., with 65% of people who had previously planned to have a child in 2025 reporting they were now holding off on the decision. Thirty-three percent said they were not comfortable expanding their families in the current economy, and 32% said they were unable to afford having a child.
Trump has imposed and rolled back various tariffs several times since taking office; the White House announced Monday that reciprocal tariffs with China were being paused for 90 days while the two countries try to work out a trade deal. Tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods are partially in effect, and the administration has also imposed tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, cars, and car parts.
The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter, with the gross domestic produce declining at an annual rate of 0.3% after having climbed by 2.4% in the final quarter of 2024.
For Americans, the tariffs have meant higher prices for items like toys, children's clothes, household tools, and washing machines.
As Common Dreams reported last week, despite Trump's proposal of a "baby bonus," Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens has termed the tariffs a "baby tax"—directly causing essentials like strollers, high chairs, and cribs to cost more.
"The president promised to lower costs on day one, and by that standard, he's broken that promise and has made choices that will cost families thousands of dollars a year," said Groundwork Collaborative fellow Michael Negron told a U.S. House committee last week.
Nearly 80% of people surveyed said they've experienced higher grocery prices since Trump took office—despite the fact that he explicitly promised his presidency would swiftly bring about a lower cost of living—and 60% said they noticed their monthly bills going up.
The Harris poll found that 66% of people are now putting off making large purchases like cars or home appliances under Trump's economy, and three-quarters of those who had previously been hoping to buy a home are postponing that purchase.
Mortgage rates are currently 6.7%—more than double what they were four years ago.
CNN reported last month that although interest rates on home loans have been falling, "President Donald Trump's scattered approach to tariffs and an escalating trade war with China has injected volatility into the stock market, and resulted in a sell-off in U.S. bonds last week."
Sixty-eight percent of Millennial and Gen Z renters—those in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s—said they had a goal of buying a home, compared to 29% of older renters, suggesting that the major life decisions of younger Americans are being most affected by the Trump administration.
The Harris poll also asked respondents if they believed the economy is worsening, and found a partisan divide: 33% of Republicans said yes compared to 73% of Democratic voters who agreed.
But among Independents—44% of whom supported Trump in the 2024 election, according to a post-election survey—64% agreed with the majority of Democrats about the economy's trajectory.
Nearly a third of respondents said they believe Trump's tariffs will cause the most harm to their household finances, despite the president's claims that the tariffs will "make America wealthy again."
During his testimony last week, Negron said that higher prices on essential goods and services "are the types of things that you would expect to hear when you look at what experts have said, that [tariffs are] going cost anywhere from $4,500 to $5,000 more for the average household once they're fully in effect."
"When you look at the promises to lower prices," he said, "the administration is not living up to them."
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Pushing to Eviscerate Head Start and SNAP, Trump Wants to Give Parents Medals for Having More Kids
Republicans, said one feminist writer, "don't care about making the world better, safer, or healthier for American families and children. They just want women to have more babies."
Apr 23, 2025
Political observers have warned that U.S. President Donald Trump has spent his first months in office "flooding the zone"—unleashing a torrent of executive actions and Republican proposals meant to overwhelm his opponents while furthering his right-wing agenda, including pushes to slash healthcare for more than 36 million children, eliminate funding for early childhood education, and weaken environmental justice initiatives.
But new reporting this week revealed that while taking significant actions that are expected to directly harm millions of children—and make the cost of living higher for parents across the country—White House officials have been considering a range of proposals aimed at encouraging people to have more children.
As The New York Times reported Monday, White House aides have met in recent weeks with policy experts and advocates for boosting U.S. birth rates, which have been declining since 2007.
Simone and Malcolm Collins, activists who founded Pronatalist.org, which they describe as "the first pronatalist organization in the world," told the Times that they have sent multiple draft executive orders to the White House, including one that would bestow a "National Medal of Motherhood" on women who have six children or more—a scheme with history in numerous fascist regimes, including those of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Other proposals aides have discussed would reserve 30% of Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have children; grant a $5,000 "baby bonus" to families after they have a baby; and fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles so they can use "natural family planning" and determine when they are able to conceive.
"Just so we're clear: Instead of teaching kids about birth control and sexual health, the government would fund programs that teach little girls how to get pregnant," wrote Jessica Valenti at the Substack newsletter Abortion, Every Day.
The latter proposal would likely be offered without offering women any information about contraception or other comprehensive sex education, which President Donald Trump vehemently opposed in his first term.
The administration's "pronatalist" push has been steadily building since before Trump won the presidency. During the campaign last year, Vice President JD Vance provoked an uproar when he doubled down on his comments from 2021 when he had said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies." He said last summer that people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future and defended his previous remarks that the government should "punish the things that we think are bad"—meaning not having children.
"For years, proposals and debates have separated having children from raising children. But parents aren't dumb. They'll look around and ask whether this is a world where it's good to have children."
Vance's claim that the Democratic Party is "anti-family and anti-child" was based largely on his belief that politicians on the left are too negative about the future—frequently expressing concern about the scientific consensus that continuing to extract fossil fuels, which Trump has promised to ramp up, will cause more frequent and devastating extreme climate events.
Since Trump took office, he has pledged to be a "fertilization president"—touting his support for in vitro fertilization even as federal researchers in reproductive technology were dismissed from their jobs—and his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, told staffers to prioritize infrastructure projects in areas with high birth and marriage rates.
But the Republican Party, including Trump, has long scoffed at concrete policy proposals meant to make raising children—not just birthing them—more accessible for American families.
The Michigan Republican Party penned a memo in 2023 saying a paid family leave proposal was a "ridiculous idea" akin to "summer break for adults," and a budget proposal by Trump in 2018 claimed to require states to provide paid parental leave, but it was derided as "phony and truly dangerous" by one policy expert.
Senate Republicans last year blocked legislation that would have helped lift 500,000 children out of poverty by expanding eligibility for the child tax credit.
According to a leaked draft for the Health and Human Services Department's budget, Trump is now proposing eliminating federal funding for Head Start, which provides early childhood education and other support services for low-income children and their families, helping nearly 40 million children since it began six decades ago.
Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus on Children, said of the proposed cuts to Head Start last week that it was "shocking to see an administration consider a proposal that will impose such widespread harm on children."
"Rarely has there been such a clear, targeted attack on children," said Lesley. "Parents already have trouble finding available childcare and early learning programs, and even when they do, they struggle to afford them. The average annual cost of center-based childcare for an infant is over $15,000, more than in-state college tuition in many states. And who has the least access and greatest financial challenges to care? The children served by Head Start.
Meanwhile, the federal budget proposal passed by House Republicans earlier this month would help pay for "huge tax giveaways for wealthy households and businesses," said the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, by cutting health coverage for 72 million people who rely on Medicaid and food assistance for an estimated 13.8 million children who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
Responding to the reports of Trump's potential "pronatalist" proposals, Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, told the Institute for Public Accuracy that the White House "can't just encourage people to have children. You have to think about what happens to those children after they're born."
"The countries that have been more successful in [raising children] have given family allowances, parental leave, and focused on who will teach and take care of children," said Galinsky. "The more children you have, the more likely it is you'll need to work and bring in a salary. Do parents have flexibility at their workplace?"
"For years, proposals and debates have separated having children from raising children," she added. "But parents aren't dumb. They'll look around and ask whether this is a world where it's good to have children."
Republicans' proposed cuts to essential services for families demonstrate that they "don't care about making the world better, safer, or healthier for American families and children," wrote Valenti. "They just want women to have more babies."
"What happens after that?" she added. "They couldn't care less."
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Trump Gutting of GSA Office Puts Dozens of Federal Childcare Centers at Risk
"It's an assault on people with small children being able to work," said one childcare facility board member.
Mar 31, 2025
The recent mass firing of employees at a federal childcare office and the elimination of its work accrediting dozens of facilities on federal property may ultimately further U.S. President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk's, goal of shrinking the government—with many public servants likely to be pushed out of their jobs due to a lack of childcare.
In a move that was not previously reported to the public, the General Services Administration (GSA)—which handles real estate and leasing for the federal government—fired nearly everyone on the 18-person staff of the agency's childcare office on March 7, soon after their supervisor advised them to take the "deferred resignation" offered by the Office of Personnel Management under the direction of Musk's advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
As The Washington Post reported Monday, the only remaining employee of the office, Jennifer Fee, told childcare centers run by the GSA on March 18 that the office would no longer be paying for accreditation or renewal for centers or requiring the facilities to be accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which has "long set the national standard for high-quality early learning programs."
The NAEYC told the Post the change is likely to result in "decreased quality and access."
"We're going to have less accreditation, less standards to follow, potentially lower quality, and higher tuition costs."
Ultimately, one member of the board of directors of a GSA childcare center told the Post, "it's an assault on people with small children being able to work."
"We're going to have less accreditation, less standards to follow, potentially lower quality, and higher tuition costs," said the member.
The GSA has overseen 82 childcare centers in federal buildings across the country for years, with the centers required to ensure that at least half the children they serve are the dependents of federal employees.
The centers have for years been able to provide care while charging families considerably less money than the average private childcare facility because the GSA covers facility costs and accreditation fees, with the childcare center board member telling the Post her center was able to charge $2,000 per month for tuition—less than many accredited centers in the Washington, D.C. area.
At least 12 of the GSA's childcare centers are located in places identified by the Center for American Progress as "childcare deserts," where there are more children in need of childcare than there are spots at licensed centers.
Half of the centers—41—are in government buildings that were included on a list of federal properties that DOGE targeted for ending their leases, and eight have been named as ones that could be eliminated more quickly through "accelerated disposition," according to new list posted by the GSA last week.
"This harms children, families, and childcare providers who care for them," said the Empire State Campaign for Child Care.
Chris Adams, a software developer, said it was "characteristically cruel" of the Trump administration to likely force both public and private sector workers "to quit by going after their childcare."
Longtime early childhood educator and advocate Cindy Jurie said the gutting of the childcare office suggests "tax breaks for the wealthy supersede all else."
While demanding cuts to government investments in foreign aid, health research, Social Security, healthcare, and education, Trump and the Republican Party have pushed for a permanent extension to 2017 tax cuts that primarily benefited corporations and the richest Americans.
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Why Every American Worker Deserves Paid Family Leave
I’m sad that we lost my brother Dave, but I’m also angry that when tragedy hits, our policies make life harder for families. I’m angry that for most of us, going back to work is a necessity, not a choice.
Oct 13, 2024
Millions of working American families are facing a crisis: how to care for loved ones.
We all need to give or get care at some point in our lives, but all too often this can be incredibly burdensome or even impossible. Too many Americans simply cannot afford their own care or are unable to take time off work for the birth of a child, a loved one falling ill, or an aging parent.
Most of us have no access to any sort of paid leave, and few employers provide leave to employees. This leaves more than 1 in 5 Americans, or 53 million people, working as unpaid family caregivers and providing more than $600 billion in unpaid care annually.
My family is among the millions who struggle with this every day.
A few months ago, my life changed in an instant. My brother Dave, his wife Katie, and their child Mikey were involved in a terrible car accident. We lost my brother that night, and Katie was severely injured, but thankfully Mikey survived unscathed.
This isn’t just about my family. This is about all of our families. It’s about the kind of country we want to live in. A country where reality is acknowledged, care is valued, families are supported, and where no one faces tragedy alone.
And as if that weren’t enough, we discovered that Katie was pregnant. She’d planned to surprise our family with the news the next week. Instead, we were left grieving the loss of a husband, a father, and a brother, while trying to support a family that was suddenly in crisis.
Our family came together as best we could. Katie and Mikey needed care, and we all needed time to process our grief. But time wasn’t something we had the luxury of affording.
Why? Because work beckoned.
Like many Americans, most of my family doesn’t have paid leave in the event of an emergency. In fact, I’m the only one in my family with access to a paid leave program. My mother-in-law had to take unpaid leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to care for Katie.
Imagine going weeks, even months, without a paycheck while trying to care for your family. Most people can’t afford that.
The rest of my family — farmers, preschool teachers, nursing assistants, small business owners — also don’t have paid leave. These are the same people we applauded and called “essential” during the pandemic. But we don’t treat them as essential when it comes to supporting them through life’s hardest moments. Where is their paid leave?
I’m sad that we lost Dave, but I’m also angry that when tragedy hits, our policies make life harder for families. I’m angry that for most of us, going back to work is a necessity, not a choice.
This is a policy failure. There is no federal rule that provides paid family leave or sick days for all workers. Only a small minority of workers receive dedicated paid family leave through their jobs. Most aren’t so fortunate. Millions of workers don’t even have a single paid sick day.
That’s why we need paid family leave for all.
Imagine a world where every family has the time to care for each other in moments of crisis. Where a parent doesn’t have to choose between being there for their child and keeping a roof over their head. Where we treat each other with the dignity and respect we all deserve.
This isn’t just about my family. This is about all of our families. It’s about the kind of country we want to live in. A country where reality is acknowledged, care is valued, families are supported, and where no one faces tragedy alone. No wonder paid leave has massive support from voters across party lines.
It’s time we ask every politician running for office if they support paid family leave. And if they don’t, we need to hold them accountable.
And then in 2025, let’s pass paid leave for all. For Dave. For Katie. For Mikey. And for every family like mine that’s faced a moment of crisis.
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Investing in Childcare Would 'Massively Increase' Parents' Earnings: Study
"This kind of payoff is almost unheard of in government labor-market policies."
Oct 07, 2024
While Republican proposals for solving the childcare crisis in the presidential campaign have ranged from recruiting "grandpa or grandma" as babysitters to slashing providers' certification requirements—with presidential candidate Donald Trump failing to give a coherent answer when asked about the issue last month—a new study delivers a simple message about how the benefits of public spending on childcare significantly outweigh the costs.
Researchers at Yale and Brown universities analyzed the universal pre-kindergarten program in New Haven, Connecticut, and found that "politicians could massively increase Americans' earnings" by expanding investments in such programs.
The New Haven program began as the result of a 1996 court ruling and is open to all families in the city regardless of income—but it uses a lottery system for enrollment due to limited funding and space.
The paper the researchers published with the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that parents whose children were selected in New Haven's lottery had 11 more hours of childcare than those who weren't able to benefit from the tuition-free universal pre-K program—enough to increase the parents' earnings by 21.7% even after their kids moved on to elementary school.
That increase makes childcare spending "one of the most effective, pro-work policies in the U.S.," said Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long.
The added earnings stemmed largely from the parents' ability to continue working without taking time off to fill in gaps left by a lack of childcare, particularly because New Haven's program includes extended hours, with children able to attend as early as 7:30 am and as late as 5:30 pm.
The paper emphasizes that families that didn't get a pre-K slot still utilized other childcare programs out of necessity—but they had to pay for them out of pocket and were able to send their children to the programs for fewer hours per week than those who won the lottery.
"A few more hours of care can have long-run returns for families that are quite a bit larger than the costs of provision," Seth D. Zimmerman, a research associate at Yale who co-authored the study, told the Post.
Combining the added earnings for parents and other economic benefits associated with early childhood education, the researchers found, every dollar spent on providing tuition-free full-time childcare yielded $6 in benefits.
"This kind of payoff is almost unheard of in government labor-market policies—much higher than for most other pro-work programs, such as the earned-income tax credit," wrote Post columnist Catherine Rampell in an analysis on Monday.
The study was published days after the White House released an issue brief titled Childcare Is Infrastructure, which the Biden administration said was made evident by its $24 billion investment in the industry through the American Rescue Plan.
"Introduction of universal pre-K across various states led to increased pre-K enrollment and higher employment rates among mothers with young children in those areas on average," said the White House. "Consistent with an increase in overall economic activity, places that introduced universal pre-k also had larger increases in new business applications and the number of establishments than places that did not."
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has expressed support for expanding childcare programs and lowering costs for families, including by restoring the expanded child tax credit and providing an extra tax break for families with newborns.
The new study suggests that in the presidential campaign, "childcare should be front and center," wrote Rampell. "If you want to help workers, help them care for their kids."
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The US Childcare Crisis Is Finally an Election Issue
As one of the only industrialized countries in the world without national paid leave, the United States forces moms in particular to choose between continuing to work or raising our children.
Sep 30, 2024
Every mother in America knows this struggle well: How do you afford to raise a child?
My daughter was born almost 14 years ago, and my family is still financially recovering from the struggle of supporting a newborn. And we’re not alone—American families are spending a greater and greater portion of their income on childcare.
According to the nonprofit Child Care Aware, the average cost of childcare in the U.S. is now more than $10,000 per year—and even higher for infants and toddlers. And the problem is only getting worse. It’s no wonder so many women are choosing not to have children because they say they can’t afford them.
I’ve come to understand my experience as a failure of our elected leaders to provide basic needs like affordable, accessible childcare and paid family and medical leave.
Right before I found out I was pregnant, I was let go from my job and lost my benefits and stable income.
Once my daughter was born, instead of enjoying every moment of being new parents, my partner and I were stressed about our financial situation. I didn’t have a job to go back to, and even if I did, we wouldn’t have been able to afford childcare.
I remember tirelessly googling childcare providers in the area and becoming exasperated at the costs. There was no way that we could afford to pay $300-plus a week just for daycare—we wouldn’t be able to cover our basic living expenses.
The situation became a Catch-22: If I didn’t work, it would be impossible to balance our bills and afford the essentials to raise a child. But if I did, we wouldn’t be able to afford those things anyway, because all the money would be going to daycare.
This is why so many mothers like me are driven out of the workforce. As one of the only industrialized countries in the world without national paid leave, the United States forces moms in particular to choose between continuing to work or raising our children.
The fortunate mothers who do have access to a paid leave program are significantly less likely to quit their jobs and more likely to work for the same employer after the birth of their first child. That’s not just good for mothers—that’s good for employers and our economy as a whole.
As I think back to those days, I remember always feeling sad, not realizing that like 10-15% of new mothers I was likely dealing with postpartum depression. That feeling was only compounded by isolation and the stress of financial insecurity.
Paid leave can help address those mental stressors. According to one study, women who took longer than 12 weeks maternity leave reported fewer depressive symptoms, a reduction in severe depression, and an improvement in their overall mental health. I know I would’ve benefited greatly from knowing that I could take the time to care for my child without worrying about winding up in dire financial straits.
Having a child should be a joyful event, not a deeply stressful one. I’ve come to understand my experience as a failure of our elected leaders to provide basic needs like affordable, accessible childcare and paid family and medical leave.
I’m glad that unlike elections in the past, this crisis has become a major issue. I hope to see a day when no mother has to go through what I did.
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A Winning Economic Agenda for Kamala Harris
Harris and Walz should run on ensuring economic freedom by reversing and remedying the brutal imbalance between the people and the powerful.
Sep 17, 2024
Today I want to talk with you about what U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris could do to win over more Americans on the issue that remains her biggest challenge: the economy.
Harris’ family-centered policies—$6,000 for newborns, a tax credit that will help people with children decide for themselves whether to work or stay at home, and universal affordable childcare—are useful and important.
But here’s the rub: Many young men and women simply can’t afford to form families in the first place. As Harold Meyerson notes in The American Prospect, Harris’ family policies won’t have much impact on many young working-class men and women employed in the private sector, where the rate of unionization is barely 6%, where gig employment is often a necessity just to get by (as is a second or even third job), and where the absence of job stability or an adequate income or both deters marriage.
Freedom—including reproductive freedom—means the chance to raise a family without soul-crushing economic stress.
The disappearance of good jobs for those without a college degree has led to declining marriage rates across all of the American working class, according to studies by MIT economist David Autor and his colleagues—a far steeper rate of decline than in the middle and upper classes.
The issue boils down to how to get good jobs to people without four-year college degrees.
On Friday, Harris made the important promise to dispense with unnecessary college degree requirements for federal jobs. She could go further and tell private employers to use skills-based hiring instead of requiring college degrees.
Harris might also call for the construction of 10 million new homes over the next four years. This would help funnel non-college workers into building trades and community college apprenticeship programs, leading to high-wage jobs that don’t require college degrees.
She could build on the impetus of the CHIPs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act to get good new jobs to places around the country that have been abandoned by most industry. The most important family policy for young people growing up in rural Georgia or North Carolina is to be able to find good jobs where they are, rather than have to leave their communities to find adequate-paying work.
She should also build on the significant work of Biden’s FTC and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department in attacking monopolies and mergers, and promise that as president she’ll fight for competitive markets where big corporations can’t keep prices high (she’s already said she’ll attack corporate price gouging).
Monopolies don’t just hurt consumers. They also hurt workers, and make it harder for them to have families. When there’s only one game in town, you don’t dare push back against arbitrary schedules and hours that keep you from your family.
Harris should attack housing developers that collude to drive up prices. She should fight against mandatory arbitration, which locks workers and consumers into private courts funded by the same companies they want to challenge. And she should commit to strengthening unions by preventing big corporations from firing workers who want them and pushing for sector-by-sector bargaining.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed exempting overtime earnings from federal tax. But remember: It was Trump whose labor department made about 8 million workers ineligible for overtime. Harris should pledge to reverse that ruling.
She should package all of this, as Jedediah Britton-Purdy suggests, as part of a push for economic freedom.
Many Americans feel powerless, ripped off by monopolies in everything from phone service to concert tickets, locked into dead-end jobs because there are no alternatives, unable even to contemplate raising a family because they can’t possibly afford the costs.
Freedom—including reproductive freedom—means the chance to raise a family without soul-crushing economic stress.
I’ve already discussed how Trump’s economic agenda (to the extent he’s provided one) is just another variant on trickle-down economics, where wealth and power go to the top and nothing trickles down. Trump’s version would result in an even more brutal imbalance between the people and the powerful.
But that’s not how many Americans see it. As Purdy says:
Although Democrats see Trump as a chaotic bad boss in chief, many supporters see him as the real defender of economic security, decent jobs, and a safe and orderly world. His call for tariffs on all imported goods and his promise to beat up on companies until they lower prices may be unrealistic, but they are concrete promises to shake up the system on behalf of ordinary people. That’s the kind of dramatic change so many people seem to want.
Fundamentally, economic freedom requires reversing and remedying the brutal imbalance between the people and the powerful. It necessitates taking power back from the ruling economic class—from the ultra-wealthy who have been bribing politicians to lower their taxes, allow them monopolize markets, and crush labor unions.
This must be at the heart of the Harris-Walz economic agenda.
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JD Vance's Solution to Childcare Crisis? 'Maybe Grandpa or Grandma Wants to Help'
"You're on your own. You ain't getting shit from us. Call grandma," one Democratic congressman translated.
Sep 05, 2024
In his latest comments on parenthood and young families, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Wednesday weighed in on how to best help parents who struggle to pay for childcare—but instead of offering a policy solution, the U.S. senator from Ohio punted the obligation to grandparents and other extended family members across the country.
At an event hosted by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk of Turning Point Action in Mesa, Arizona, Vance replied to a question about lowering childcare costs by saying he wants to "make it easier for families to choose whatever model they want."
But Vance appeared to base his answer on the assumption that what families want—and what they haven't already considered on their own—is childcare help from their family members.
"One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is make it so that—maybe, like, grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there's an aunt or uncle who wants to help out a little more," said Vance. "If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we're spending at daycare."
In other words, said U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.): "You're on your own. You ain't getting shit from us. Call grandma."
The comments came weeks after a 2020 podcast interview with Vance resurfaced, in which he agreed that "the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female" is to take care of grandchildren.
Vance didn't address what steps might be taken to allow more grandparents to provide childcare for their families—or how the idea might conflict with other Republican policy proposals, such as raising the retirement age or cutting Social Security benefits.
"Maybe Grandma and Grandma still work," said author Jacie Floyd on the social media platform X. "Maybe Grandma and Grandpa have health issues. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa live 1,000 miles away. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa don't want to. The [Republican Party] shouldn’t be planning Grandma and Grandpa's retirement for them."
A Pew Research poll found last year that 19% of Americans aged 65 or older were still working, almost a twofold increase over the late 1980s, and other surveys have shown that nearly 43% of people between 55 and 64 don't have retirement savings accounts—likely making them unable to spend much time providing childcare for working families.
According to Illumine, an app used by parents and childcare providers, a 2022 survey found that 72% of U.S. parents were paying at least 10% of their income on childcare, and 51% were paying more than 20%. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines "affordable" care as costing no more than 7% of a household's income.
At the event in Mesa, enlisting the help of grandparents wasn't Vance's only proposal for the vast majority of parents who are spending too much for daycare. He also suggested lowering the hiring standards for childcare workers, ostensibly enabling providers to pay them less and charge families less for their early childhood services.
"We've got a lot of people who love kids, who would love to take care of kids, but they can't, either because they don't have access to the education they need," said Vance, "or maybe more importantly, because the state government says you need to have some ridiculous certification that has nothing to do with taking care of kids. So, empower people to get the skills they need, don't force every early childcare specialist to go and get a six-year college degree where they've got a whole lot of debt and Americans are much poorer because they're paying out the wazoo for daycare."
Vance didn't elaborate on the "ridiculous certification" that childcare workers should be able to forgo. Requirements for employees in the industry vary from state to state and can include training in CPR and first aid, food handling, and recognizing and reporting child abuse and neglect. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a high school diploma or equivalent is the typical educational requirement for entry-level childcare workers, and the median pay in the industry was just $30,370 per year or $14.60 per hour as of 2023.
"Vance basically spends two minutes saying, 'SUCK IT UP, POORS!" said USA Today columnist Rex Huppke. "Daycare costs too much cause you demand 'qualified' providers who aren't 'total randos' with 'no childcare experience.'"
The reality on the ground in states like Michigan shows a very different picture than Vance's suggestion that childcare centers are paying workers too much to make their services affordable for families.
With 85% of childcare funding coming from the federal government instead of the state in Michigan, Kimberly Esper of Little Hawks Childcare and Learning Center told Mid-Michigan Now on Wednesday that many centers struggle to pay staff fairly while keeping their daycare services running.
"It's a balance that I think every childcare center is struggling with right now," said Esper.
Last month, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, unveiled an economic agenda including an expanded child tax credit. Vance has expressed support for such a policy, but missed a vote on a related bill earlier this year, prompting Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to denounce him as a "phony."
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), who introduced the Child Care for Every Community Act, contrasted Vance's proposals on Wednesday with those of the Democrats.
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) added that "families deserve leaders who understand the importance of making childcare more accessible and affordable."
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