Family and children are and have always been the cornerstone of conservatism. The moment the New York Times publicized the Trump team’s plan to make stay at home mothers eligible for childcare payments, however, another GOP feud was born.
The lines were immediately clear. The same folks that find any excuse to complain about Vice President J.D. Vance as the face of the “woke right” are taking aim at a proposal that would make certain single income households helmed by married parents eligible for childcare subsidies typically handed to daycares.
The current eligibility structure of the 30-year-old Child Care and Development Fund program is flawed and, like most welfare programs, susceptible to exploitation by fraudsters and moochers. The $12 billion in taxes the daycare program spends on subsidizing unmarried working mothers incentivizes out of wedlock births and outsourcing parenting duties, both inherently anti-conservative behaviors.
Under the Trump administration’s proposal, “parent-based child care” in a home supported by a spouse who “works at least 35 hours per week” and meets the same income qualifications as current recipients would be recognized as a legitimate cause worthy of tax dollars.
The proposed reform, which can’t be implemented without a comment period and until at least next year, does not expand the CCDF or demand more taxation. It simply redirects already-allocated funds, which Trump’s HHS tried to scale back, to better align government spending with the Trump administration’s pro-family goals and not discriminate against families with married parents on a single income.
A small sliver of stay-at-home parents would actually qualify for the payout, but the knee-jerk reaction from the think tank right was to vilify those who want to raise their own babies as “welfare queens” and “socialist.” They claim they shouldn’t have their hard-earned money “stolen” and handed to women who don’t “organize their lives so that they can work from home or provide for their families in a flexible manner.”
The debate quickly shifted from those spending complaints to claims that moms and dads both having to work is actually a good thing and it’s okay that tax dollars are currently used to subsidize that corporate framework.
In an ideal world, the government axes the welfare program altogether and instead offers families with a stay-at-home mother a $9000 tax break. But that’s not on the table. The chances that Republicans will further risk re-election to go after the “social safety net” are low and contra to history. As I type, our GOP-controlled Congress sits in recess. This scheduled break comes just a few months before the midterms and after two years of legislators largely failing to move the needle in favor of the conservative voters who elected them.
Pretending that Trump can put the CCDF on the chopping block tomorrow is a false dilemma that completely ignores the willingness and “power of the purse.” The people arguing such are not simply being intellectually dishonest, they are further proving why conservatives have so much ground to make up in the first place.
The welfare state is a scourge, but it’s not going away anytime soon. Which is exactly why we have to harness it or risk losing it yet another very important cultural battlefield to the left. In the wild world of welfare, financially compensating married stay-at-home moms is the lesser of tax-funded evils. In fact, despite what the nasties online suggest, it’s not an evil at all.
Data shows that while “one-earner families (whether the breadwinner is male or female) have fallen economically behind,” having a stay-at-home mom is good for the development and well-being of both younger and older kids and boosts America’s already-tumbling birth rate.
Data showing the differences in outcomes between children of working moms and stay-at-home moms is hard to find, we do know that homeschooled children, whose education requires an at-home parent (mostly mom), are “healthier, happier, more virtuous” and less likely to engage in unsavory behaviors like illicit drugs, lying, and gambling than their conventionally schooled peers.
The facts is, children are better off if they are intentionally raised by their parents instead of a daycare, a nanny, and a government school. That’s a hard thing for some people, especially women, to hear. After all, many conservative females have bought the feminist-fueled lie that they can have a career and more even though data shows they are happier concentrating prioritizing marriage and kids.
While American families with stay-at-home moms are the minority, that isn’t because women want to be in the workforce; it’s because they have to be. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, a majority of mothers, 56 percent, would prefer to be full-time “homemakers” instead of full-time employees. The working mothers who could find a way leave their jobs over the last few years did so in significant swaths.
In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.” Family is the foundation of civilization. The CCDF as is doesn’t simply pose a threat to the security and stability offered by married parents, it encourages the opposite. Something has to give and it we can’t let it be the foundation.
If Wall Street Republicans have made anything clear over the last couple months, it’s that GDP is God and funneling tax dollars to separate children from their mothers is a good thing. The recent infighting was never about $20 burritos and cutting stay-at-home moms a meager check that would otherwise go to subsidizing single motherhood. It’s about the battle between living out conservative values and accepting the cultural lies we’ve been sold as truth.
