The pitch is deceptively irresistible
President Trump has touted stipends for stay-at-home parents, baby bonuses, IVF discounts, and an even using the promised windfall of tariffs to pay for child care. Vice President JD Vance says he wants more babies in America, “We should worry that in America, family formation, our birth rates, a ton of indicators of family health have collapsed,” he claimed. But their posturing hasn’t produced family-friendly policy.
As we mentioned in last week’s edition of ThePoint, the Administration is considering creating a subsidy for married parents who care for a child at home. It’s a great step in the federal government recognizing that work in the home is actually work, but the fine print reveals that it robs working parents to pay for stay-at-home parents. The plan would take money from the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) that helps families pay for childcare so parents can work, study, or get job training.
But that fund is nowhere close to meeting demand, with only about one in six eligible children receiving subsidies, and eligible families across the country are already sitting on waiting lists. Almost a million families nationwide receive CCDF assistance today, and about 80% of those households are headed by a single working parent. Expanding who qualifies without expanding what’s available doesn’t create a benefit – it reassigns one.
The same sleight of hand runs through the budget. The First Five Year Fund reports that the Trump FY27 budget will “maintain” (i.e., flat-fund) Head Start and the Child Care Development Block Grant. But in classrooms facing rising rent, utilities, payroll and health insurance costs, flat funding is a cut.
Policies that actually help young families
If we truly want young families to thrive, we need to move beyond the con and make real investments, like the ones Children First has been fighting for:
• Paid family and medical leave
• Affordable child care for more working-class families
• A fully-funded early childhood system that adequately pays educators and staff
• High-quality early care and education programs for low-income families like Head Start and Early Head Start
• Healthcare coverage families and young children
• Family tax credits to offset rising costs of having kids
Children First helps you look behind the political rhetoric and understand the reality so you can ask your state and federal lawmakers, “Why would you deceive me?” Because false promises undermine families and that’s the truth of it all.
