Subsidized day care: Good for parents and kids?

Overhauling the U.S. child-care system to benefit millions of families “sounds great, right?” said Arwa Mahdawi in TheGuardian.com. Not to conservatives, who’ve launched an “unhinged” culture-war battle over President Biden’s proposal to invest $425 billion in child-care funding and universal pre-kindergarten. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) says Washington wants to control kids’ lives “from the cradle to college,” while other Republicans accuse Democrats of emulating socialist Western Europe or even the Soviet Union. In the real world, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times, the Leave It to Beaver model, with a working father and stay-at-home mother in their first marriage, is the reality for just 14 percent of American children. And the pandemic has forced more than 10 percent of moms with young kids to leave their jobs to tend to child care. Helping those families isn’t some “liberal plot to force mothers to leave home and take jobs.”

Government-subsidized child care is “a bad deal for children,” said J.D. Vance and Jenet Erickson in The Wall Street Journal. Research has shown that kids sent to day care from two-parent homes show significant increases in “anxiety, aggression, and hyperactivity.” Many families put kids in day care “because they have to, but the clear majority of Americans say they want to spend more time with their kids.” The value of close-up parenting is miraculous, said Mary Szoch in TheFederalist .com. A mother’s heartbeat and voice help a baby grow. “A mother’s smell and touch help a child deal with stress.” A “one-size-fits-all” plan that outsources parenting is not what most mothers, fathers, and kids want.

Of course many parents “would rather care for their own children,” said Christine Emba in WashingtonPost.com. But many mothers work because they have no spouse, or because “their families could not survive on their spouse’s income.” Some Republicans, including Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Mitt Romney of Utah, have proposed giving “generous cash benefits” directly to parents. Democrats should take them up on it, letting families decide whether to have a parent stay home or pay for day care. Democrats should also push for reforms, such as a higher minimum wage and an improved medical safety net, “that would make it possible for a family to survive on a single worker’s income.” If Republicans want parents to be able to afford to stay home, make them “walk their talk.”