Brookings Event
June 10-11, 2024
Abby M. McCloskey
Thank you so much for having me.
I want to spend my few minutes on child care from a conservative perspective. This is not because I always agree with it, but it tends to be an underrepresented voice in these conversations. I believe there’s wisdom in it as we explore areas for bipartisan breakthrough.
I’ll talk about the perspective of the political right in three areas of child care:
Research
Narratives
Policies
First, the research
The true and life changing ROI of child care interventions for particular groups - say for really disadvantaged children, or in programs with family wrap-around services, or interventions at a certain age - are often painted as a broad brush that goes beyond what we know to be true.
For example, in White House Build Back Better Framework, in the section on universal preschool, it says this: → “ research shows that every $1 invested in high-quality early childhood care and education can yield $3 to $7 over the long-run.” The underlying study is the Carolina Abecedarian (pronounce: ABC-dare-ee-an) Project //from a couple dozen kids in the 1970s which started in infancy. //
The stretching of what we know has been a bad match for conservatives already prone to not trust experts. Four-in-ten Republicans (38%) have little trust in scientists to act in the public’s best interest, according to Pew. It’s my sense that widening differences in family structures, incomes, and rural-urban divides will make it even harder to generalize the impact of universal programs going forward. Before we even discuss new research, it’s imperative to lead by example in exercising humility with the current literature.
Second, the narrative
The narrative on the political left and right has diverged, in a way so old that it’s new. A decade ago when I was at the American Enterprise Institute, paid leave was an anathema, but we could talk about child care on the economic policy team. Because child care was a pro-growth, pro-work policy and a crucial part of conservative welfare reform in the 1990s. This was a comfortable, not too personal, space to operate in.
Today, the most muscular part of the Republican party, the MAGA social conservative crowd - is less growth and work oriented than it is culturally oriented. On the right, a strong strand of conversation is why we are only talking about the perspective of a caretaker other than the parent. From the Institute for Family Studies: “Rather than disincentivizing mothers to stay home, let's reshape child care funding to incentivize and support that choice.”
I think we are more likely to see things such as opening up CCDBG for stay-at-home parents or preferring cash support to CDCTC or paid leave. This is diametrically opposed, both in terms of where dollars are put but also values, with say encouraging more women in the labor force.
The distrust in data combined with increasingly different goals and narratives has the potential to block increased investment;.... progress.
Third, policy implications and way forward
I think we have to get simultaneously way more practical in policymaking and way more aspirational in our research.
On the practical side, clearly we can make the system work better without mandatory school-schedule child care at age 3 or encouraging all moms to stay home. To me the data is most convincing on child care support for economically disadvantaged households. A targeted way to address that would be fully funding CCDBG so that any child at eligible by the federal level could receive support.
But I think we also need to get more aspirational in our goals and in our research and in the data we collect. I recently led a group of 32 family policy experts from all across the country, different sectors, and most importantly politically. Tara was part of it; Josh, Katharine, Indi, Elisabeth. We met monthly for a year and published our report in February.
The section of our paper that I would have reflexively called child care - we called: increasing high-quality care options for children. There were no economic arguments or GDP arguments included in this section. Instead, we used the language of family flourishing. We developed four components: (1) essential needs being met (which suggests an ability for a parent to work and targeting more resources to the neediest families), but it also included (2) relational health, between parents and children and families and the community, (3) choice, families having choices that align with their values - not just on care options but on work options, such as part-time work (4) optimism about the future, children are developing well and the system is reliable.
I believe that threading these goals together and orienting the care discussion around family flourishing - could provide a rich narrative and research landscape. The debate would benefit from more and frequent data on the ideal versus actual care and work situations and measuring relational health and family well-being.
Lastly, I’d like to close with what I believe are four acts of childcare. In the 1970s, when the first child care tax credit was signed into law by Gerald Ford, it was about women’s work and tax relief; 20 years later in the 90s it was about welfare and upward mobility; 20 years after that it was about student's kindergarten readiness and academic performance, and I think we’re entering at the very front end of a new understanding of care. And it seems to me that the relational component being brought in by conservatives could be part of the catalyst for a more holistic conversation on care and family flourishing; the fourth act.
Thank you –