Biden’s elitist work-family policy won’t work for most families
May 8, 2021
President Biden’s $1.8-trillion American Families Plan suffers from a common problem in work-family policy today. Much of it favors the family preferences of one group, our elites, rather than giving parents of every social background the choices they really want. “I think the Biden child care proposal was frankly designed by people who think the ideal family model is two parents working full-time and outsourcing child care,” observed author and potential Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance. “That is a problem because most people who live in the country don’t want that.”
Vance’s point is that the Biden administration’s plan to spend an extra $225 billion to expand child care, after already boosting child care spending by $40 billion in the American Rescue Plan, ends up supporting just one model of family life. That model is one in which both parents of young children work full-time and delegate the care of those children to institutional daycare. This is the most popular model for the American upper-class, according to a recent YouGov survey by American Compass.
