How blue states discriminate against most families
Conn Carroll
Video Embed
Most people believe the federal government should do more to help families with young children, but how should that help be provided?
As Rachel Cohen demonstrates by looking at the topic of child care, we need to come to an agreement about the goal of any policy before we begin debating how best to implement it.
FEMINISTS DON’T BELIEVE IN FEMINISM EITHER
When the government invests money in child care, what is it trying to accomplish? Are we trying to help close educational achievement gaps between rich and poor children? Or are we trying to make it easier for parents to work full time? Or are we trying to give parents the resources to find the best child care solution for them?
Depending on which of those goals you choose, the ideal policy solution will end up looking quite different.
For example, if your goal is to provide more equal educational opportunities for children from different backgrounds, you will probably prefer a solution that includes heavily regulated professional child care centers staffed by credentialed and educated providers. But such a policy would drive child care costs for everyone through the roof, and so to make them at all affordable, the federal government would have to spend tens of billions of dollars every year subsidizing tuition at these facilities and providing training.
This policy would also make it easier for both parents to work full time. But what if not all parents want to work full time when they have young children? What if most mothers actually prefer to work part time or not at all? And what if parents would prefer to have their parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, or church groups care for their children? Should these parents get nothing?
The Democrats who control the state of Vermont have decided parents who don’t want to send their children to professional child care facilities will get nothing. To pay for the largest expansion in child care subsidies in the state’s history, Democrats repealed a $1,000 per child tax credit that benefited all families up to $175,000. The legislation essentially takes money out of the pockets of Vermont’s working families and gives it directly to professional child care providers.
If your goal is to make sure as many Vermont mothers of young children either work full time or else suffer a substantial financial penalty, this is probably a good policy. If your goal is to help working families achieve the work-life balance that is best for them, this policy is an epic disaster.