Highlights
The idea to write about a conservative case for child care was jumpstarted by “The Conservative Case for Daycare” by Elizabeth Grace Matthew. The gist of her recent article is that “if we want people to start families younger and raise decent kids,” then “access to good daycare is part of the answer.” Conservatives, she says, “need to stop myopically idealizing the male breadwinner/female homemaker model if we want to realistically prioritize younger family formation.” She also asserts that daycare might help in families where the parents are "plainly overwhelmed by the demands of modern primary caregiving."
What is the conservative case for child care? There is one, but in my experience, it’s not that.
First, a case for child care needs to be made with specificity, not in generalities. In the United States, without entrenched maternity and/or parental leave, making a case for day care for infants is something that not even a left-wing progressive would necessarily promote in Canada. Taking a year’s maternity leave is something over 70% of Canadian mothers do.
Conservatives, so far as political movements go, are diverse in how they approach social issues. But on finances, there is agreement about less reliance on government, more on natural communities, and privately-funded care. This makes the “case for daycare” a troubling one for conservatives to make, even when it’s made exclusively on economic grounds.
Canada's Experience
In Canada, if it has been said once, it has been said a thousand times by advocates for government daycare systems: the market cannot provide child care. Private “for-profit” child care programs, these advocates say, will cut corners to provide poor quality at prices that are still too high for most parents to afford.
Let’s say this is true for a moment. Then, we must acknowledge that neither can the government provide quality child care. Current evidence shows since the Canadian federal government allocated CAD 30 billion towards daycare in 2021, access to all kinds of child care has diminished; difficulty finding care has grown.
There are practical problems associated with daycare provision for very young children. It is expensive regardless of who foots the bill. Care provided by trained professionals and licensed by the government involves layers of bureaucracy to confirm (important) safety standards, precisely because the nature of daycare is that we must have a continuously staffed place to leave our kids—whether we personally know the staff or not. Whoever funds daycare, families or the state, the business case is often tenuous. This tenuous business case pushes full-time care on mothers whether they want it or not, because offering part-time care is less financially viable. When there are problems with finding daycare, first advocates blame the market, which is unfair as daycare has been state-subsidized in Canada for decades. But next they say daycare is not working because it is underfunded. Long story short: Daycare is heavily politicized, and not by freedom-oriented, little-platoon supporting politics.
Child Care vs. Daycare
So, what is the conservative case for child care?
You’ll notice I’ve switched terms: there is a conservative case for child care, which contrasts favorably with daycare. Child care includes professional care in centers but also more informal care, unlicensed care, nanny care, granny care, family care, babysitting and other options I have not mentioned. It’s a much bigger view, a more vibrant ecosystem (when left to flourish, unhindered by government intrusion), and mostly, more local. It requires more creativity, and possibly more angst, as you think about (aka worry about) how to get to a form of child care that works for you and your family, likely in conjunction with other families.
Child care recognizes that every parent needs some form of help sometimes, regardless of how much waged work one does. (We are learning, for example, that “stay-at-home” mothering is not quite so homogenous as some might imagine.) Daycare, in contrast, prioritizes parents doing full-time waged work.
The conservative response to child care is not to say we must have a space in a daycare center for a majority of families. It is to buttress families, civil society, and social institutions. It is to strengthen the economy such that families can care for their children, either with help by paying others, or on their own, or through networks of extended or chosen family. A conservative approach to child care includes a voluntary, unpaid sector, as well as private, paid options.
The conservative response to child care is...to buttress families, civil society, and social institutions. It is to strengthen the economy such that families can care for their children.
Daycare and Poor Parenting
Next, we should address Matthew’s idea that daycare can help kids develop, particularly when mom (as Matthew asserts) can’t or won’t parent well. “The second, and more controversial, reason conservatives should welcome daycare as part of the childcare tapestry,” she writes, “is that not all mothers are equally suited to being full-time primary caregivers, especially in the isolated and intensive form that role often takes today.”
Here, I want to be emphatic: I strongly disagree with the idea, which Matthew states overtly in her piece, that any child “needs to be in daycare” because parents are isolated or overwhelmed, and/or engaging in what she sees as poor parenting.
In theory, even if a daycare were able to correct for bad parenting, that child would still go home at the end of the day. The answer to poor parenting is better parenting, and this cannot be achieved simply by separating parents from their children. This is why early, designed experiments into how to do care for disadvantaged kids, like Perry Preschool, included time with the mothers.
Where we have problematic parenting trends, these are mirrored in daycare environments even with larger groups of kids. One parent may coddle their only child, but the daycare is going to have to return children in one piece to parents at the end of the day. They cannot initiate adventures and hope to have no accidents, so most don’t try. Bubble-wrapping kids—the “indoor childhood” phenomenon—can happen in different ways, also at daycare. We don’t have evidence to assume daycares could correct for “gentle parenting.” They may rather be the source of it.
Neither do we have evidence that the presence of daycare, or openness to it, allows women to have more kids earlier. Why fertility is so low is the subject of a thousand demographers’ debates, books, podcasts, etc. It’s complex. How family policies play into this remains hotly contested. European nations, and the province of Quebec—places that have had daycare systems for decades—still have below replacement fertility.
Some of the best research available suggests that the quantity of time spent in whatever form of child care and particularly at young ages (below three) is as important as the quality of child care. Which takes us back to the conservative case for child care. Keep it local, keep it relational. Drop your kid off only with an adult you know and trust, whether the place is licensed or unlicensed, staffed by professionals or friends. Don’t assume a licensing agency or the government did better vetting than you could. For the smallest kids in care, keep the hours as low as you are able to financially swing.
The conservative case for child care rests in working towards communities that can support families where they are, in community, with whatever changing needs for waged work parents have over a lifetime. And in building this kind of “conservative child care system,” it will thankfully be accessible to anyone—regardless of their political leanings.
Andrea Mrozek is Senior Fellow at Cardus, a non-partisan think tank.
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the Institute for Family Studies.
*Photo credit: Shutterstock
