The government of President Donald Trump is currently drafting a historic regulation: it will allow married parents who decide to stay home to care for their children to receive the subsidy that the federal government has traditionally paid to daycare centers for over 30 years.
The initiative is driven by Vice President JD Vance and consists of reallocating funds from the Child Care and Development Fund, a program created in the 1990s to help low-income families pay for childcare while they work or study. Now, the scheme aims to direct that money to the parents.
If the decree is implemented, married couples within certain income brackets will be able to use the assistance for what is called "home-based childcare." The only condition will be that one spouse remains at home while the other works at least 35 hours a week.
The Trump administration is considering cutting subsidies for daycare centers and reallocating those funds to parents who choose to stay home to care for their children
The Democratic rag The New York Times, as expected, strongly criticized the measure, stating that it "would create the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home and raise their children," considering it one of the clearest attempts by the White House to consolidate a traditional family vision through public funds.
But for the Trump administration, the logic is simple: they argue that a state program that finances third parties to raise a child, but denies that same support to a mother or father, lacks neutrality and ultimately penalizes families who prefer home upbringing but cannot afford it.
Vance has advocated this position for years. Already in 2021, in a joint opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal, he warned about the potential harms of daycare at early ages and concluded: "Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent."
Vance is one of the major proponents of this policy
