The Backlash to the Stay-at-Home-Parent Subsidy Is Overblown

C onservatives of various warring factions can once again get behind the idea that the country’s massive and entrenched Great Society welfare state should, at a minimum, not actively discourage the nuclear family, which we have long argued is economically productive as well as moral. But in a flurry of misguided pre-2028 infighting, many have chosen to set up the circular firing squad to blast away at the wrong target. 

The program at the center of what has now been nearly a weeklong intra-right firestorm is a proposed regulatory change to the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which has existed for over a third of a century and has been, regrettably, reauthorized and funded by several successive Republican Congresses. The White House proposal, which seems to have been pushed internally by the vice president’s office, does something rather simple: It expands eligibility for a $9,000 credit toward daycare costs to married parents caring for their own children at home, if at least one household member is in the workforce.

Crucially, CCDF is not structured as an entitlement. Rather, it is given a funding pool every year through the appropriations process, which means two important things. First, Republicans have a bite at that apple every budget fight, and second, despite more eligible applicants than funds every year, it will not be expanded unless Congress — in its pathetically singular annual political act — chooses to grow the program budget. All the proposed changes will do is allow otherwise household-income-qualifying married mothers who care for their children themselves instead of sending them off to daycare to enter the lottery to receive the subsidy.

In addition to opening the program to existing single-income married couples, removing the penalty of losing the program in the case of marriage may actually have the best possible outcome in some circumstances: Enrolled single mothers may choose to marry their children’s fathers. If so, that not only statistically makes the women themselves less likely to stay in poverty and on any kind of assistance, but also improves outcomes for the children themselves and decreases the likelihood that the cycle of poverty and dependency will repeat for another generation. 

There are certainly some potential pitfalls and negative consequences to the program as proposed by the administration; unfortunately for critics, however, every one of them exists even if the program is left in its current state. Like all income-capped welfare programs, it can discourage someone from taking a better job or promotion if the step up isn’t significantly better than what her current employment plus Uncle Sam’s bonus can provide. And while fraud will almost certainly become an issue with families claiming the subsidy for in-home care, the revelations of the past several months ought to disabuse us of the notion that the same fraud potential doesn’t exist with daycare subsidies. Quality Learning Center, how quickly we have forgotten you.

Sometimes derided by memes about “line go up,” this is a classic example of overvaluing a particular economic metric — in this case, being “in the workforce” as the only unalloyed good in all circumstances — and ignoring the reality on the ground. Under the current rules of the program, if two mothers next door to one another swap kids for the day (and jump through some hoops to get certified as daycares), they can qualify for not one but two subsidies from the taxpayer. If each woman mothers her own child during the same day, neither qualifies — an absurd and frankly anti-family outcome.

We should also not forget that this proposed shift for one relatively small program is taking place in an environment where both the dual-income family and the single-parent family have been aggressively subsidized and propped up by public policy for decades. If we’re keeping tally of whose tax dollars are funding whom, we can start with the extensive tax credits beyond this one low-income program that are available to offset the cost of daycare and “paid for” equally by families making sacrifices to avoid using those services. 

Finally, and it’s notable that this point has barely been raised in any of the debates, which have focused almost exclusively on the incentives for adults, structuring the benefit this way is better for the children whose care we’ve been arguing about. Until now, the taxpayer has been paying $9,000 to send even young infants to full-time paid childcare, and not the fancy kind some parents insist is not subject to the studies showing poorer behavioral outcomes. 

As conservatives, we should be able to say without any hesitation that it is better for Johnny to be with Mommy, and if that outcome costs we the beleaguered taxpayers the exact same amount of money, then we should have no reason not to cheer it. And in cheering it, conservatives will be backing the wishes of mothers themselves, the majority of whom continue to report in surveys that they believe it is best not to work full-time while their children are young.

There may yet be a time when the very real divisions on the right must boil over, but this modest proposal tweaking the existing welfare state toward more pro-social ends isn’t it. By all means, continue what has been, until now, a quixotic but ideologically just campaign to get Republicans to actually act on campaign promises of the past half century and strangle the Great Society in what can no longer be called a rhetorical crib. 

But in the meantime, there are only two doors in front of the Trump administration. Behind the first, the taxpayer spends $12 billion annually sending checks to daycares, and behind the second, some as-yet undetermined fraction of those checks will go to similarly low-income married mothers who want to care for their own children instead.

While concerns about the debt and dependency are generally well-placed, it would be foolish to make the perfect the enemy of the good by opposing reforms that make our existing social safety net incentivize things that are better rather than worse. The welfare state may be a serious problem, but a welfare state that does not discriminate against traditional families is better than one that selectively subsidizes single motherhood, daycare, and other less-than-ideal arrangements. Choose the second door.