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Miami Herald
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Why Americans should care about child care - even if they don't have kids
The other day, I came across an article about child care that felt so familiar I let out an exasperated sigh. Child care, the article announced, is now more expensive than college tuition and rent in most states. Many of us had just read another version of the article in March. And before that, in November 2024. Then there's the one that dates back a little further - to 2013. Many of these stories, which seem to come out on an annual basis, fail to mention that this is a problem that spans decades. The real news is that it hasn't gotten any better, and many American lawmakers don't seem to care enough to take action. I asked Elliot Haspel his thoughts on this a few weeks ago when I interviewed him about his new book, "Raising a Nation," which will be available Aug. 11. In the book, he presents 10 arguments - some of them well known and others less intuitive - for why child care needs to be a more supported part of American society. His book starts with an anecdote that echoes my observation on the dispiriting lack of momentum around the issue: In 1998, President William Jefferson Clinton stood in the Rose Garden and declared in an address that child care was essential to the nation's economy. President Barack Obama made the same argument in 2015. President Donald Trump did the same in 2019. Yet as the years go by, little changes. "We have been having many of the same child care battles for a long time, for decades and decades and decades," Haspel told me. Haspel's arguments in "Raising a Nation" include "The Economic Case," where he digs into how child care affects business productivity and the labor force; and the "The Patriotic Case," where he presents parenthood as patriotic and argues child care is important for American democracy. He cites numerous worrisome examples of the consequences of insufficient policy and investment. In making "The Community Case," for instance, he tells a jarring story from Montrose, Colorado, where the lack of child care has led to difficulties recruiting and retaining police officers. That, in turn, negatively affects the city's crime rate and response time to emergency calls. And in arguing "The Antipoverty Case," he highlights extensive research on how a lack of child care is a key theme for families who are unable to move out of poverty. "Care is, in fact, just as important to our social infrastructure as having a public education system, having public libraries, having public parks," he told me. As he writes, it's clear why we haven't made much progress as a nation, and why we remain behind nearly every other wealthy country in investing in child care: "We have never established that good child care belongs among the pantheon of American values." While Haspel's book focuses more on why we need more robust child care policy than howwe get there, he provides a few ideas for the latter: giving child care educators a wage that could support their own families, investing in stay-at-home parents and informal caregivers along with licensed care, and including before- and after-school care and summer care in the system. While those seem like lofty goals, Haspel argues it is indeed fully "American" to embrace such policies. Access to high-quality child care, he argues, is not an "individual family obligation but rather a societal imperative." Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@ This story about child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. The post Why Americans should care about child care - even if they don't have kids appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Vox
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The kid-friendly policy that's quietly sweeping the country
This story originally appeared in Kids Today , Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions . It's preschool application season in New York City, where I live. That means parents of toddlers are eagerly and anxiously signing on to a (surprisingly user-friendly) city-run website and ranking their preferred programs, in the hopes that, come fall, their 3- and 4-year-olds will be able to go to a high-quality pre-K in their community — for free. These programs are huge for families, who otherwise would be spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on day care. They can be wonderful for kids, who are better prepared for kindergarten and more likely to go to college one day. And they're a surprising bright spot in an otherwise bleak child care landscape. In recent years, states like California, Colorado, and New Mexico have expanded their publicly funded pre-K options. New York City has staved off some proposed funding cuts to its program for 3-year-olds, thanks in part to the activism of families who have come to count on it. Preschool has emerged as that rare issue with bipartisan support, as lawmakers in deep-red states like Alabama increase funding to their programs. In 2022–2023, enrollment in publicly funded preschool hit an all-time high, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. Preschool still faces plenty of challenges — funding remains uneven, not all programs are high-quality, and the Trump administration's threatened funding freeze is still creating chaos for some federally funded programs. But the relative success of programs across the country — and the way they've been sold to lawmakers and the public — could hold lessons for all of us as we move through the uncharted waters of Trump 2.0. At the most basic level, preschool helps get kids ready for school. Children who go through a pre-K program are more likely to have pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills that can help them in kindergarten, and are 'more used to being in a school-like setting,' Elliot Haspel, a family policy expert and senior fellow at the think tank Capita, told me. I saw this with my older kid, who learned how to wait in line and how to pack and unpack a backpack in pre-K — skills we take for granted, but that have to come from somewhere. The benefits don't stop at kindergarten, though (or at backpack loading). One study found that kids who went to preschool were more likely than their peers of similar backgrounds to graduate from high school, take the SAT, and go to college. Other research is more mixed, and not all programs have the same results. But one of the most widespread effects of preschool is also one of the simplest: Pre-K is a source of dependable, free child care, which helps parents work and reduces the economic stress on families, Haspel said. One study found that universal preschool raised parents' average earnings by 21.7 percent per year for each year a child was in the program. Increasing the economic stability of a family, in turn, is 'correlated with any number of positive educational, health, and socio-emotional outcomes for children,' Haspel said. Advocates have been pushing to get more families access to these benefits for decades, but the idea of universal preschool really began taking off nationwide in the 2000s, thanks in part to a campaign by the Pew Charitable Trusts called Pre-K Now, Haspel said. The idea of subsidized child care has been stigmatized in America for over a century, Haspel has argued, seen as a form of 'welfare' for poor children and subject to racism, classism, and a bias against working mothers. So Pre-K Now focused on pre school , putting the emphasis on education rather than care. In some places, preschool has become a part of life, and families won't give it up without a fight. 'In this country, public education is a right,' Haspel told me. Americans have come to expect free, universal education as part of the infrastructure of their towns and cities. Pre-K Now and other advocates built on this expectation, pushing to expand the public education system to include younger kids. In a lot of places, it worked. In 2001–2002, 14 percent of 4-year-olds were enrolled in publicly funded preschool; by 2022–2023, the share had more than doubled, to 35 percent. That's still a minority, but campaigns are continuing. In 2022, for example, New Mexico voters passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to early childhood education, and creating a funding stream of about $150 million every year, much of which goes to preschool programs. California, meanwhile, aims to give all 4-year-olds in the state access to free preschool by the fall. In some places, preschool has become a part of life, and families won't give it up without a fight. New York City has had free, universal preschool for 4-year-olds since 2014, and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that universal '3-K' for 3-year-olds would be next. But his successor, Eric Adams, backed away from that goal, and last year, about 2,500 kids whose families applied did not get a 3-K offer. Parents pushed back, signing petitions and calling their council members. All families who applied ultimately received offers that year (though some spent time on wait lists), and the mayor reversed some planned cuts to the program's budget, said Rebecca Bailin, founder and executive director of the advocacy group New Yorkers United for Child Care. 'It is a real proof of concept, that organizing on this issue was broadly popular,' Bailin told me. Like any public policy, universal preschool is complicated — in some places, publicly funded pre-K has actually harmed child care access for infants and toddlers by siphoning resources away from day care providers, Haspel said. In New York, the Adams administration initially prioritized affordable child care for low-income communities over universal 3-K. But it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, some advocates say. New Yorkers United for Child Care is now campaigning to expand the city's commitment to universal early education to include 2-year-olds. 'This is a cost that everybody has to bear,' Bailin said. 'There's no reason why our government can't provide it.' Our government, at least at the federal level, now seems to be collapsing around our ears, and it can be hard to be optimistic about any policy change. At the same time, preschool is typically offered by states or cities, whose governments are likely to become ever more important to average citizens in times of federal upheaval. Support for preschool also transcends party lines, with states like Florida, Iowa, and Oklahoma leading the pack when it comes to enrollment. If there are lessons in the success of pre-K, some of them are clearly about branding, which is a little depressing (do we have to be so afraid, as a society, of offering child care?). But they're also about persistence. The campaign to pass an early childhood amendment in New Mexico took more than 10 years, said Jacob Vigil, deputy policy director of the nonprofit New Mexico Voices for Children. Along the way, backers of the amendment had to build a coalition composed not just of child care advocates, but of immigrants' and workers' rights groups as well. 'That kind of trust' can take a long time to build, Vigil said. At least in New Mexico, though, it eventually paid off, which feels like as good a lesson for right now as any. School attendance was down 20 percent in the Los Angeles Unified School District last week, which the superintendent attributes both to fear of ICE raids and students participating in protests against Trump's immigration policies. The Trump administration's anti-DEI efforts could harm Black students academically and psychologically. A new bill, the Kids Off Social Media Act, aims to stop kids under 13 from creating social media accounts. Like other legislation of its kind, it might not work. Yes, my older kid has now discovered the mega-popular Wings of Fire series, about a world of dragons with various powers and inter-dragon grievances. We started with A Guide to the Dragon World , which is sort of an ancillary text and honestly pretty confusing to newcomers. I will report back when we understand anything. In response to my story last week about Donald Trump's executive orders affecting trans kids, a reader asked, 'How many trans kids are reliant on Medicaid for their gender-affirming care?' This question turns out to be a little difficult to answer. The federal government doesn't collect data on how many people, kids or adults, access gender-affirming care through Medicaid, Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, told me. We do know that 26 states have passed laws banning gender-affirming care for youth, and that about 40 percent of trans youth live in those states, meaning they are likely unable to access care using Medicaid (or any insurance), unless the bans have been blocked in court. In the remaining states, young people could potentially use Medicaid for gender-affirming care, but some hospitals have stopped offering such care in the wake of Trump's executive orders. If you're looking for an estimate of how many young people, generally, access gender-affirming care, Reuters has some data from 2017–2021, but their analysis doesn't break out people who used Medicaid specifically. I hope this is helpful, and thanks for the question! 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