In a recently published commentary in the Wall Street Journal, Wheatley Fellow Jenet Erickson, and her co-author J.D. Vance, raise important questions about the wisdom of President Joe Biden’s $225 billion budget proposal for daycare. Apart from questioning the cost, Erickson and Vance question how to ensure efficacious care for millions of children moved abruptly into childcare.
They review empirical research on non-parental care for young children that shows poor behavioral outcomes that persist into young adulthood. Although high-quality care can be beneficial for children from disadvantaged homes, “young children from average healthy homes can be harmed by spending long hours in child care.” They also highlight how views about childcare differ along class lines. Well-to-do career-minded couples tend to favor outsourced child care, while working class and middle-class families “prefer a model with one parent working full-time and the other providing at-home child care.” Accordingly, Erickson and Vance lean toward policy proposals like “parental tax credits” that provide parents the flexibility to choose between professional childcare or scaled back employment while children are young.