A few months before he began his 2022 Senate campaign, JD Vance reached out to a conservative family policy group with an idea for an opinion essay. He wanted to write about why government-subsidized day care was bad — and why most young children do better when one parent stays home.
Mr. Vance’s article was published less than two weeks later in The Wall Street Journal, declaring, “Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent.”
As the Trump administration meets with advocates who want to reverse declining birthrates — a cause that Mr. Vance has embraced — proposals for more robust, federally funded child care have been noticeably absent from the discussions.
Instead, the White House has pursued reductions. The Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, eliminated many positions in offices that help fund day care for low-income families, including at Head Start — part of broader cost cutting efforts led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
But while critics say it is hypocritical for the government to cut child care support as it pushes for more babies, the conservative politicians and advocates leading the movement do not see a contradiction. They do not just want more children, but a stronger family unit. And stronger families are formed, they say, when a parent stays home.
White House aides have discussed a variety of ideas in recent weeks intended to allow, and in some cases encourage, parents to spend more time at home with their children, according to three people who have been part of the conversations. Ideas under discussion include giving more money to families for each child they have, eliminating federal tax credits for day care and opening up federal lands for the construction of affordable single-family homes. If families can spend less on housing, advocates reason, then more families will be able to survive on only one income.
The approach is reflected in legislation recently filed by Republicans in Congress. Senator Jim Banks of Indiana introduced a bill that would effectively pay stay-at-home parents for their labor. Other Republicans want to expand the child tax credit, an annual credit of $2,000 per child, in part by dismantling additional tax breaks reserved for working parents to use on day care.
Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who has proposed expanding the child tax credit to $5,000 per child, hopes the extra money would allow more parents to scale back at work.
“It gives them that opportunity to say, ‘Oh my gosh, we can actually raise our kids,’” Mr. Hawley said of the proposal. Mr. Vance backed a $5,000 child tax credit during the 2024 presidential campaign — an approach that has garnered bipartisan support, though most Democrats also back day care subsidies.
The effort is part of a broader social agenda being pursued by the Trump administration and its allies to promote a very specific idea of what constitutes a family — with a married mother and father who have as many children as possible, a concept that leaves out many families that do not conform to traditional structures or gender roles.
Studies are inconclusive on whether children do better when they spend most days with a parent, rather than a paid professional. Results are largely dependent on the relative quality of the care the child receives at a day care center, and the care the child receives at home.
Regardless, many American families rely on two incomes to make ends meet. Almost 65 percent of mothers in two-parent households with at least one child under 18 work outside of the home, a number that has risen dramatically over the last 50 years. At the same time, the cost of child care has skyrocketed, averaging over $11,000 per child a year, as of 2023, with families in many major cities paying more than double that amount.
Conservative politicians and advocates say that they are not pushing moms out of the work force, but rather giving them the choice to step back from work if they want to. They point to research: According to a March Gallup survey, 60 percent of U.S. women say they would prefer staying at home or working part time as opposed to full time — compared to just 37 percent of men. Moreover, some conservatives say American parents have become too focused on their careers, often to the detriment of their children.
White House officials say they want to give more parents the flexibility to stay at home, but are also exploring ways to roll back restrictions on child care centers. While critics warn that deregulation could lower the quality of child care, the White House says that approach is necessary to make child care more affordable.
“President Trump believes parents know how to best raise their children, and this administration is pursuing policies that empower parents with the flexibility to make the best choices for their kids while lowering child care costs,” said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman.
Mr. Vance — who has three young children — declined a request for comment. Mr. Vance’s wife, Usha, left her job at a law firm when her husband was named to the Republican ticket last summer. A spokesman for Mr. Vance did not respond to a question about how the couple has handled child care.
Conservative advocates and politicians, when discussing the issue, generally do not specify which parent could choose to stay home with the children. But more than 80 percent of stay-at-home parents are women — and some advocates are open about the fact that they see benefits to a mother filling that role.
“We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hard-wired to bond with mom,” said Jenet Erickson, a co-writer of Mr. Vance’s 2021 essay and a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative policy group that advocates for raising the birthrate. “They know her smell, they know her heartbeat, they know her voice. I just think, why should we deny that?”
Leading child care advocacy groups have criticized the proposals circulating in the White House about how to encourage women to have more babies, saying they fail to address the true costs of having children.
“If you’re serious about birthrates you have to start with affordability,” said Reshma Saujani, the chief executive of Moms First, a national child care advocacy organization. “No medals, no P.R. stunts,” she added, referring to proposals for raising the birthrate that have been pitched to the Trump administration. “People need child care and paid leave.”
Activists who want to raise the birthrate do not see subsidized child care or better parental leave as effective ways to persuade people to have more children. They point to northern European countries, like Norway and Finland, where birthrates have continued to fall despite some of the world’s most generous government paid leave and child care policies.
How an increase in stay-at-home parenthood would affect birthrates is less clear. There are no definitive studies on whether having more parents at home would lead to more babies.
But some conservatives in Congress and the administration say their interest in these issues goes far beyond the birthrate.
“It’s not just about increasing the total number of children,” Mr. Hawley said. “It is increasing the number of families, mothers and fathers, and the ability of the family to spend time together.”
Many conservatives draw a distinction between what they call a “work-focused” approach to family policy — which includes ideas like subsidized day care and paid family leave — and a “family-focused” approach.
“A work-ist approach to family policy makes it easier to do more work,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and the co-founder of the Institute for Family Studies. “But we are more about policies that make it easier for parents to invest in time with kids, and not privileging a model where both parents are working outside of the home.”
In addition to the current $2,000 child tax credit, the tax code includes a separate credit of up to $1,050 per child for families to use on child care, a provision that has existed for almost 50 years. That money is reserved for families in which all parents, including single parents, are working, looking for work, or in school — leaving out families in which one parent stays home.
As Republicans in Congress work to pass a tax bill this month, some would like to dismantle the tax credit reserved for day care, which they see as discriminatory toward stay-at-home parents. Representative Blake Moore of Utah has proposed a bill to eliminate that provision, and give more money to all parents, regardless of what they do for child care.
“I just want to give women more money in their own pockets to decide what they want to do,” said Rachel Wagley, Mr. Moore’s chief of staff, who helped design his bill.
“Our message for women is, ‘Look, having kids is a challenge, and it does take sacrifice,’” said Ms. Wagley, who is pregnant with her fifth child. She added: “‘You’re going to adapt to your new reality, and that could look really different than what you thought it would look like five years ago.’”
The legislation from Mr. Banks, the Indiana senator, goes one step further by including a provision to pay stay-at-home parents for the care they provide. That concept, while controversial, has bipartisan roots. President Bill Clinton in 1999 proposed a tax break for both stay-at-home parents and for parents using day care programs.
Mr. Banks in a statement accused Democrats of “blocking the child care options many families prefer, like using a church-run day care center or having a parent or grandparent care for their children.”
While versions of child tax credit legislation have been proposed on both sides of the aisle, many Democrats in Congress bristle at the way some Republicans frame the proposals — and at their resistance to other policies that make it easier for mothers to work.
“I think it is bogus,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who has long worked on child tax credit legislation. “You want to help families? How about paid family and medical leave?”
An expanded child tax credit on its own also fails to address the critical day care shortage across the country, said Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University who writes about parenting. Child care programs, which operate on an extremely thin profit margin, need government subsidies to survive and provide high-quality care, Ms. Oster said.
By failing to subsidize day care, and by just giving more cash to families, she added, “we’re just giving people money without thinking about the supply side.”
“There are not enough slots,” she said.
Parents emphasize that even the proposals with the largest child tax credits do not come close to the amount of money needed to allow one parent to stay home. Some say they would much rather have subsidized day care and paid family leave.
“It’s not based in the experience of families who have to work,” said Katie Holler, a 27-year-old mother from Ohio with two young children. “It’s pennies when you need dollars.”
Ms. Holler traveled to Washington in 2023 to push for better child care with a grass-roots organization where she now works as a field organizer. She ran into one of her senators in the halls of the Capitol.
“If you can relieve the financial burden of child care,” Ms. Holler recalled saying to Mr. Vance, “someone might be more inclined to have a baby.”
Caroline Kitchener is a Times reporter, writing about the American family.
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