The presidential debate moderators never asked the candidates to explain what they will do to improve the lives of children. So that made what the candidates chose to say about children, or didn’t say, during the 90-minute debate especially telling. 

Vice President Harris started out strong using her opening statement to tout her plan for a $6,000 Child Tax Credit to help parents afford “cribs, car seats and clothes.” Keep in mind that the Child Tax Credit was once robust enough to lift tens of thousands of children out of poverty and help middle income families pay their bills.  Now without leadership from the next president, the Child Tax Credit will drop by 50% to $1,000 by the end of next year.

Harris made it clear that she will not simply reverse this policy, she will expand the value of the credit. That’s a policy position we wholeheartedly endorse from any candidate. So far in the race, the former President has not specified his position on this proven pro-child policy.

The VP also referred to the challenges families face affording child care. The First Five Years Fund, a national think tank on early childhood issues, recently polled voters and found that 9 out of every ten voters think it’s important for the candidates to have a plan to help working families afford child care. 

Maybe that explains why earlier this week in Philadelphia, the Vice President released a child care plan that will use the power and resources of the federal government to cap how much families will pay out of pocket for child care to 7% of their household income. To put that in context, currently families are digging deep into their pockets for child care accounting for more than 13% of their income.

To be fair, a few days before the debate, a reporter asked the former President, “If you win in November, can you commit to legislation making child care affordable?” Trump’s response was, “… you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.”  While acknowledging that child care is in the “must have” column, the former president still hasn’t explained how he would use the levers of government to make sure every parent can pay for it.

VP Harris’ proposal of a 7% cap on child care costs, if enacted, would be a gamechanger for families. But we all know that the devil is in the details. We need to know more about how the policy will be rolled out to ensure children are the true beneficiaries by boosting the quality of child care for every child.

Paid family leave never surfaced in the debate dialogue. For Harris, it’s obvious where she stands.  She’s been pushing a federal paid leave program in her stump speeches across the country. It’s a policy also enthusiastically endorsed by her running mate, Governor Tim Waltz, who recently enacted paid family and medical leave for working parents in Minnesota. 

So far in this campaign the former President has been silent on paid leave. He was boldly on the record supporting paid leave in his last election, and signed legislation to temporarily give families paid leave during the pandemic. That’s why it’s hard to understand why his platform now ignores the issue since 72% of Republicans and 74% of Independents are eager to cast their vote for a paid family leave candidate.

Kids in every community live in fear for their lives as school shootings become the new normal, social media addiction sweeps them up in an epidemic of anxiety and despair, and teen suicide hits a record high. Parents identify their kid’s mental well-being as a top concern. Unfortunately, the former President and the VP both failed to tell voters how they would address spiking mental health needs of children.

With 46 days left in the race, both candidates need to tell parents what their plan is to make sure that regardless of how a child is insured (Medicaid, CHIP or private insurance), every barrier to accessing mental health services for their children from prevention to counseling to intensive therapy will be removed.

There is plenty of time for both candidates to make up for the missed opportunity of a debate devoid of any question about children by telling us more about how they will put the needs of children front and center in their administration.