Universal pre-K and childcare were part of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, part of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, and a centerpiece of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s promise to voters. The idea was to include children as young as 2 years old, plus subsidies for those with younger children.
But as Mamdani in particular looks to make his promises a reality, Democrats are discovering that parents don’t want to build the type of family the party is pushing on them.
According to a new poll conducted by the University of Chicago in collaboration with the mayor’s office and nonprofit organizations, most New York City parents prefer to care for their children themselves or have a relative provide care and do not want to put their sons and daughters into a professional care facility.
Among parents with children under 1 year of age, a whopping 69% would prefer to care for their child themselves, and an additional 23% would prefer care provided by a relative, a nanny, or some other in-home care provider. Just 7% said a school or childcare facility would be their choice.
The numbers were not much higher among parents with children under 2. A solid 63% preferred care by themselves or family, while only 18% preferred a school or childcare facility. Not until children reach the age of 3 do a majority of parents prefer a professional out-of-home childcare provider.
Given these stark numbers, why are Democrats so keen to push mothers out of their homes and back into the workforce as quickly as possible after giving birth, forcing them to pay strangers to care for their children?
There are two reasons.
First, ideology. As the Biden administration noted, the percentage of women without young children in the workforce is virtually identical to the percentage of men without young children in the workforce. But as soon as women start having children, the gap between the sexes grows, as does the pay difference between men with children and women with children.
Democrats see workforce and pay gaps as a problem that must be solved through government intervention. If mothers are leaving the workforce and creating holes in their resumes by caring for their children, then we should create government programs to push them back into the workforce as quickly as possible to mitigate gender imbalances. Or so leftist thinking goes.
Never mind that most women, especially working-class women whom Democrats claim to represent, would rather stay home and care for their own children instead of using a government subsidy to pay someone else to do it.
The second reason is political. For two decades, Democrats have directed billions of taxpayer dollars to the childcare industry at the urging of labor unions. The unions use that money to expand their membership, often forcing workers in non-right-to-work states to pay union fees as a condition of employment. Union dues are then converted into election campaign donations for Democratic politicians who keep the subsidies and campaign donations flowing.
Democrats are not the only ones who have introduced legislation extending childcare benefits to families with young children. Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL) and Deb Fischer (R-NE) have introduced childcare bills, while Joni Ernst (R-IA), John Curtis (R-UT), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Susan Collins (R-ME) have signed on as co-sponsors.
If and when Democrats and Republicans are able to come together and act on a bipartisan basis on this issue, we hope they will keep in mind the childcare arrangements that families actually want and not try to cajole mothers back into the workforce against their wishes.