The public’s views on these questions cover a massive range.
The District of Columbia government requires that all child care workers have four-year degrees. Idaho, meanwhile, is moving aggressively to deregulate child care.
Forces within the Biden administration argued that the most important pro-family policy was subsidizing formal child care. Many conservatives argue that the government should just give parents money, which they can use for whatever method of caring for children they want — formal child care, informal child care, building a granny flat, or working less.
In 2024, economists studied the relationship between child care regulation and the gap between how many children a woman wanted and how many she had. They found “fewer child care regulations are associated with smaller fertility gaps,” leading them to conclude “women are better able to achieve their fertility goals in policy environments that allow for more flexibility in child care options and lower costs.”
Yet pro-family conservative Patrick Brown worries that Idaho’s approach goes too far.
Underlying this debate over regulation and subsidy of child care are differing visions of what American child care should become.
The Democratic Party, especially in blue states and cities like Washington, has been trying to institutionalize the care of young children, to make it more like K-12 education. This calls for publicly provided child care, state and federal funding, and strict regulation. The push to institutionalize child care is also one reason some Democrats prefer child care subsidies to simple child allowances or child tax credits.
A good article by Rachel Cohen at Vox explores the conservative approach.
“Subsidies” for day care, Cohen writes, “also steer families toward day care centers instead of the more informal options that many parents prefer.”
SOCIAL SECURITY IS IN WORSE SHAPE THAN YOU THINK
Cohen quotes a supporter of Idaho’s deregulation making an important argument: “The entire business model of child care is focused on preschools, when what people really want is tía Maria’s house down the street, with a sandbox, and a snack, and a loving grandmother who can take care of four or five kids at the same time.”
This is not merely a difference in policy or a difference in parenting. This is a difference in worldview. Do you seek the formal, the transactional, the standardized, or do you seek the local, the relational, and the flexible?
