OPINION:
President Biden’s child care proposals are perhaps the most insidious of all the woke burdens Build Back Better would impose on America.
For many parents, high-quality care has become prohibitively expensive. Licensed providers in school-like settings can run up to $24,000 a year. Waiting lists — especially for infants — are long.
For Boomers and Gen Xers, grandmothers often stepped up, but those options are less available for Millennials and Gen Zers. Instead, couples and single moms turn to micro providers — licensed women working in their homes — and the informal sector — unlicensed providers operating under the radar.
State requirements vary. Some only enforce quite minimal standards and don’t offer better guarantees of safe, competent care than do referrals in tightly-bound communities like church congregations, babysitting co-ops and other parent networks.
Poor care in the early years often results in disruptive behavior and subpar academic performance in elementary and secondary school and antisocial behavior and low earnings among adults.
The most fundamental problem is that child care is labor-intensive. Wages account for about 60% of costs at licensed providers, even though workers are paid only an average of $12 an hour. That’s well less than half of the compensation for preschool instructors in schools.
Feminists quickly point to Europe, where government subsidies help put most children in professional settings. They don’t mention that the kind of welfare state Build Back America would create requires the typical European worker to fork over 50% more of their pay in income and payroll taxes than do Americans.
The Biden plan would lower child care costs to 0-2% of income for families earning less than their state median wage and 7% for those earning up to 250% of that standard — but for licensed care only.
The states would administer programs, but to qualify, they must first come up with federally-approved plans to pay child care workers a “living wage” and enable more providers to become licensed.
States move slowly. Just look at the mess created by Affordable Care Act exchanges or how deftly states distributed federal pandemic supplements for unemployment insurance.
Vouchers and cash subsidies would overwhelm the available supply of licensed care. To mitigate, the state programs would phase in benefits over several years, starting with low-income families.
With licensed facilities already having about 30% more demand than slots, that would render licensed care unavailable for the majority of middle-class families — especially those with children under two years.
The program would further exacerbate shortages by denying funds to improve facilities at churches. Sheer madness because those have lots of inexpensive space mainly used only on Saturdays and Sundays.
Women forced out of the labor force would get no help at all. The program offers no benefits to stay-at-home moms or parents compelled to use unlicensed providers.
It reflects the biases of the Ivy League professionals — Manhattan corporate attorneys married to college professors — and not the reality of state college graduates and non-degreed families in less remunerative work.
An American Compass survey found a majority of working- and lower-class couples and a plurality of middle-class families would prefer a one-parent working and one-parent at-home model. Only upper-class professionals prefer the child care option.
The Acela class can afford the nannies, au pairs and the most expensive licensing options.
Cancel culture dilettantes that push the European model tend to view nuclear families with traditional divisions of labor as a petri dish for male exploitation. However, a Gallup poll found 50% of women with children under 18 would prefer taking care of their families at home over holding a job. Apparently, many don’t share progressive Democrats’ suspicions of men.
If the Biden program proved successful, it would put the certification of child care workers under the same kind of processes as school teachers. That would raise the true cost of child care by funding a new bureaucracy and additions to University Education Departments.
Before you know it, required classes would emerge in diaper changing and critical race theory.
We could see 3-year-old white males taught to be submissive to women and people of color.
Bringing child care workers’ pay up to the level of preschool teachers would raise the cost of quality care to about $43,000.
Lower-earning parents in many two-income families would be worth more taking care of their young children than in paid work. If they choose, enable that choice and the national welfare would be better served.
Focus on the Refundable Child Tax Credit — give the money directly to parents and let them decide how it should be best spent.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland and a national columnist.
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