A Better Solution to the Child Care Crisis

If the extensive research on the effects of center-based child care has made anything clear, it is that the care of children is something we should take seriously. It matters to kids, and it matters to families. Since the pandemic, talk of a “caregiving crisis” has dominated discussions of child care policy, including the barriers of high costs, low caregiver wages, long waiting lists, and difficulty accessing high-quality care. The problem is that the policies advanced often offer a one-size-fits all “solution” of massively expanded government subsidized center-based care. Substantial evidence suggests this is not what children need, nor what most parents want.  

The recently introduced "Respect Parents’ Childcare Choices Act” from Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) offers an important attempt to address these realities. Sen. Rubio's bill, which is part of a broader set of post-Roe legislation he has sponsored, increases access to child care support for many more families, without falling into the trap of a one-size-fits all approach, empowering parents to choose from the full range of caregiving options. 

To increase access to child care for many more families, the bill draws on $5.25 billion made available by eliminating the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, a program which has ignored single-earner families while benefiting wealthier families. This significantly increases the funding made available directly to families through the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant. 

The bill also protects families’ access to child care by eliminating the option for states to contract directly with child care providers. In doing so, the bill creates a 100% voucher-based system that provides direct assistance to families, empowering them to choose the care they feel is best for their own children. This includes support for families in which both parents work as well as families where one parent stays home to care for children. As long as the family has a combined total of 40 hours of work per week, married parents could receive direct financial support from child care vouchers, instead of having to use the voucher to pay for another provider. 

The proposal also offers help to single parents who get married. It increases the income eligibility threshold when they marry, rather than causing them to face thousands of dollars of financial penalties, including losing eligibility for child care support. By eliminating a marriage penalty, the bill recognizes the significant role of stable marriage in children’s development, and the importance of continued support for parents who marry.

It further empowers parents to choose who they feel is best to care for their child by providing exemptions for relatives such as grandparents, aunts, or uncles as well as other in-home providers. This includes religious child care providers, which the bill protects from discrimination, to ensure that families can choose child care settings consistent with their faith.

This approach is much more in line with what families actually want. A 2022 Bipartisan Policy Center Survey found that 62% of parents preferred informal care arrangements rather than center-based care. Most of these parents preferred to share child care with a spouse, rely on relatives, or make arrangements with friends or neighbors, rather than use center-based care—even if center-based care was free or convenient. In fact, center-based care was the least preferred choice for working moms in another recent survey. What they most desired were flexible work arrangements where both parents could split care, followed by one parent staying home part or full-time.   

Working-class and middle-class Americans, in particular, are most likely to prefer having one parent work full-time while the other cares for their children at home. Some of these families put their kids into full-time child care because they have to, but the clear majority would prefer to avoid that choice. These families strongly preferred government assistance in the form of tax credits and cash assistance to enable parents to choose the arrangement they think is best for their kids. 

Nothing matters more in a child’s life than the care they receive from their own parents.

Parents are not off-base with these preferences. In the last three decades, brain research has confirmed the importance of deeply bonded relationships from birth. Healthy development of the mind and body takes place from within a close relationship with another deeply invested person, one that mothers and fathers are designed to create. Development is not just genetically encoded; it is dependent on a specific quality of social-emotional experience with those closest to the child.  

This reality is underscored in some of the strongest research findings on child care. The largest longitudinal study of early child care in the United States, the NICHD-SECC, which followed 1,300 children from birth to age 15, found that more hours per week in center-based child care (or any non-parental care) during the early years of life predicted significantly increased risk for social-emotional challenges. 

Quebec’s experiment with a massive expansion of government subsidized center-based care confirmed these risks. When the program started in 1997, it promised a “healthy start” for all children while simultaneously increasing women’s labor force participation through government funded, high-quality daycare. But years of emotional and behavioral assessments collected on children who attended the program showed significant increases in behavioral problems across development (especially boys), as well as decreased self-reported health and life satisfaction and increased criminal behaviors into young adulthood.

These findings do not mean that any time in child care spells disastrous developmental effects for children. In fact, some studies of exceptionally high-quality child care have found that children from lower-income backgrounds can benefit from a more enriching, stable center-care environment, compared to children whose homes already provide a stable, enriching environment. But for many children, early, extensive, and continuous non-parental child care can put them on a trajectory for social-emotional challenges. 

Nothing matters more in a child’s life than the care they receive from their own parents. And many parents depend on child care providers to offer some kind of help for their young children. At its core, the “Respect Parents’ Childcare Choices Act” recognizes that “parents are in the best position to make crucial decisions about how their children are raised.” Parents are empowered when they have more options to choose from. It’s encouraging to see lawmakers like Senator Rubio and his team responding with better solutions to the child care crisis that empower parents and recognize the developmental needs of all children.  

Jenet Erickson is a Research Fellow of The Wheatley Institution and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Family Studies.