No major American city has ever built a universal child care system. That means that nearly three-quarters of American parents who are looking for a way to take care of their children are struggling to find it. At the same time, costs have exploded: Day care now runs more than twice what it did just before the pandemic.
Most politicians don’t even try to enact universal systems — the cost and complexity are daunting, and child care has long been seen as a private family problem, not a public responsibility. But Zohran Mamdani ran on such a plan — and New Yorkers made him their next mayor.
Many parts of Mr. Mamdani’s agenda have been dismissed as unrealistic, and his child care program often tops that list. He has promised free care for every child from 6 weeks to 5 years old and pledged to offer child care workers wages “at parity,” in the campaign’s words, with public school teachers. Critics say it will cost too much and prove impossible to build at scale. A poll from this fall captured the skepticism: 71 percent of likely New York City voters supported his pitch for universal child care, but only about 50 percent of those surveyed thought he could actually deliver it.
Having reported on child care policy around the country over the past 10 years, I think many people are looking at Mr. Mamdani’s plan all wrong. It will not be easy to implement, but if he learns from the mistakes that have derailed past efforts, he could pull off something remarkable. He has the opportunity to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers with young children — many of whom pay over $20,000 a year to send their children to day care and preschool. More than that, he could offer a powerful example to leaders all over the country.
Universal child care need not be a pipe dream in America — something we envy the Danes and the Swedes for, but never imagine having for ourselves. It can and should be as fundamental to a city’s infrastructure as transit or housing, as essential for attracting workers and residents as any investment a mayor can make. After all, for most parents of young children, child care isn’t optional — it’s what makes holding down a job possible.
Mr. Mamdani’s child care bid comes at a moment of unusual political openness to the idea. When the pandemic shut down child care options for millions of Americans, it stranded parents and employers alike. In the years since, a growing coalition of economists and business leaders has come to see child care as an integral part of economic growth — not a handout, but a way to keep workers in the labor force and families in cities.
That openness crosses party lines. Polling released this year found that a majority of Republicans now say the federal government spends too little on programs that benefit children — a notable change for a party long skeptical of new social spending. Candidates for governor in Georgia and Wisconsin are running on universal child care plans, and affording child care is now a question that presidential candidates from both parties get asked about in debates.
The first thing Mr. Mamdani will need to get right: Any new system has to include the full range of child care options families rely on. That means not just day care centers and public-school classrooms, but also home-based businesses — small day cares run out of private residences — and more informal arrangements with family and neighbors.
When people imagine universal child care, they often picture massive new facilities going up across a city. That’s not sufficient. “Child care infrastructure exists, and it exists in the neighborhoods that need it most,” said Jessica Sager, the co-founder of All Our Kin, a nonprofit that supports home-based child care providers. Most New York City home-based providers don’t receive city subsidies or support, she said — and bringing them into the system could unlock thousands of slots for families who need them.
New York has learned the importance of such investments the hard way. When Mayor Bill de Blasio started rolling out universal pre-K for 4-year-olds in 2014, his administration funneled nearly all the new money to child care centers. The result was that home-based providers, who relied on revenue from preschool-age children to stay afloat, lost a critical part of their enrollment. Many child care businesses collapsed, and providers quit the field. The United Federation of Teachers chapter that represents home-based providers shrank from 28,000 providers in 2007 to just 12,000 today.
Connecticut offers a better model. Its Early Start program, which launched this summer, includes infants and toddlers and guarantees home-based providers both a minimum amount of funding and even a voice in how the program is run.
It’s a hopeful sign that Mr. Mamdani’s pick for first deputy mayor was the budget director under Mr. de Blasio, who helped secure funding for universal pre-K, and one of his transition co-chairs played a critical role in expanding that program; they should know what worked and what didn’t. Mr. Mamdani seems keen on a mixed-delivery system, saying during his campaign that he envisions subsidizing “families who prefer to have a trusted neighbor or relative take care of their child.”
Getting the design of such a program right is only half the battle. To deliver on all this, Mr. Mamdani will have to move boldly — but not too fast. In 1997, Quebec tried to implement universal child care in three years. The rush led the province to cut corners on quality, and the fallout has given skeptics ammunition ever since. Vice President JD Vance has cited Quebec’s rocky rollout as evidence that universal child care isn’t worth pursuing. Just last month, The Economist cited Quebec in a misleading piece on the “harm” of universal care. Early stumbles cast a long shadow.
There’s a danger in the other direction, too. In the few states that have made real investments in child care, leaders have been too quick to claim “mission accomplished” when plenty of families still don’t have good care options for their kids. In a country like the United States, where caregiving has long been devalued, no child care system can survive without sustained attention and investment, year after year.
You can see this problem play out in wages for child care workers. Child care is one of the country’s lowest-paid jobs, though Washington, D.C., has tried to change that locally. A few years ago, the city established what it called a pay equity fund to bring child care workers’ salaries closer to those of public-school teachers, supplementing their wages via a new tax on the city’s highest earners. By many measures, D.C.’s program has been a success: Child care workers saw significant pay increases, funded by the city, and that enabled day cares to hire more staff members and care for more children. But when budget pressures hit, the supposed dedicated funding became a political football. The funding has not kept up with the program, which has created uncertainty about its future. For workers who had finally started to feel fairly compensated, the whiplash has been demoralizing and destabilizing.
New Mexico is perhaps the most instructive example of a premature victory lap. The state has earned glowing national praise for its governor’s commitment to make all families eligible for state child care subsidies. But eligibility is not care. Even in 2023, before this latest expansion, only a quarter of eligible children under 6 were receiving aid — and while enrollment had surged among middle-income families, it had fallen among families below the poverty line. Moreover, this spring, legislators quietly diverted some child care money to a behavioral health program — illustrating the competing budget pressures politicians face.
In New York, much media coverage has focused on how Mr. Mamdani will pay for his child care plan. And it’s an important question, since the plan will cost an estimated $6 billion or more, and federal Medicaid cuts are threatening to blow a hole in the state budget.
But there are reasons for cautious optimism. Mr. Mamdani can’t fund a program this size without Albany, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has signaled strong interest in expanding child care across New York. Mr. Mamdani has shown a willingness to negotiate with her in return — even if she’s not willing to raise taxes on the wealthy, as he’d prefer. And they’ve found common ground elsewhere: They both seem open to loosening certain regulations on child care providers.
For decades, the United States has told families that child care is their burden to navigate. Mr. Mamdani made a bet that New Yorkers were ready for a different answer. If he can deliver, he’ll give the rest of the country a much-needed blueprint to follow, too.
Rachel Cohen Booth is a senior policy correspondent for Vox. She is working on a book, forthcoming from Harmony, about individual agency and social change.
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