To the Editor:
Re “How Mamdani’s Audacious Child Care Plan Could Work,” by Rachel Cohen Booth (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 15):
As an immigrant mother and literacy advocate, I read this essay with both relief and resolve. Relief, because it confirms what families like mine have long known: The child care crisis is not a personal failure but a policy failure. Resolve, because this moment demands courage, not caution.
Attempts to discredit universal child care miss the point. Universal child care is not inherently harmful — poorly designed systems and implementations are. Quality is everything. We must invest in early childhood educators: fair pay, sustained coaching, pathways for growth. Anything less undermines children and families alike.
Child care is not only about giving parents the ability to work. It is also about the development of children. It is about building the foundations of lifelong opportunity. In New York City, only 19 percent of children affected by poverty read proficiently by fourth grade, according to the Nation’s Report Card (2024). Children who cannot read become adults whose independence, mental health and upward mobility are severely affected. We cannot separate care from learning; education in early years determines long-term outcomes. Universal child care must include universal literacy.
This is the unfulfilled demand of the feminist movement and a moral imperative for immigrant and working families today. Leaders like Zohran Mamdani are showing what bold, values-driven leadership looks like. Child care is essential infrastructure. Families are waiting. Our children deserve it. We must act.
Eliana Godoy New York The writer is the deputy executive director of Literacy in Community.
To the Editor:
Rachel Cohen Booth raises important points about New York City’s opportunity to create a much-needed child care blueprint. As Ms. Booth noted, families need a range of options. At the same time, offering too many choices without clarity or adequate funding is exactly the problem we have now.
New York City families are already struggling to understand a maze of local child care options: Head Start, Early Head Start, 3-K, pre-K, federally subsidized care, child care rated by QualityStarsNY and more. Each option comes with a siloed bureaucracy that drains public resources and doesn’t help the many families who prefer to rely on nannies, family members or other trusted caregivers.
New York City should go where no other child care system has gone before by providing clear, fully funded options. Regardless of setting or funding stream, child care options should fall into one of two categories — safe and nurturing child care or intentional early childhood education. Regulations, autonomy and funding levels should fit each classification.
When families and providers can select from a simplified, jargon-free, well-funded child care menu, children are better positioned to thrive. The incoming administration should take note.
Marica Cox Mitchell Washington The writer is chief program officer of the Bainum Family Foundation.
The Best Gift Ever
To the Editor:
Re “The Best Gifts You Can’t Click to Buy” (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 21):
The essay argues that “the best presents make the recipient feel seen.” I agree — and yet the best gift I have ever received doesn’t quite fit that description.
Twelve years ago, on our first Valentine’s Day together, my partner gave me a handmade, heart-shaped lollipop from Papabubble, a small artisanal shop in Amsterdam. It wasn’t something I needed. It didn’t surface a hidden vulnerability or solve a quiet problem.
What it did instead was something rarer. The gift didn’t “see” me — it played with me. It treated our love as joy rather than insight and elevated our shared silliness into something worthy of ritual. A handmade candy heart is earnestly silly. No wink. No apology. In that seriousness about not being serious, it offered a different kind of intimacy: permission to be unserious without irony.
Gifts that make us feel seen affirm who we already are. This one did something slightly braver. It shaped who we could be together. It encoded an ethos — we are allowed to be silly, even on the most seriously romantic day of the year. That, to me, goes beyond recognition. It is not just being seen. It is being free.
Cost: 10 euros; time: 12 years.
Tanushree Goyal Princeton, N.J.
The post Hopes for Mamdani’s Vision for Child Care appeared first on New York Times.
