A Progressive Framework for Family Policy: Reducing Costs for What Matters Most (Part I)

1) Humans are good.

2) Children are good.

3) Families are good.

There’s no reason for Democrats to shy away from these ideas or this message. Democrats should say these things loudly, and then act on them to make raising children easier and more affordable. Unlike MAGA, we are fully capable of being pro-natalism and normal about it. There are a number of policy options on the table that Democrats can and should support to bring down the cost of raising children. Here’s what progressive family policy could look like.

Three Goods: Humans, Children, Families

Humans are good. We give each other company, solve complex problems, cooperate at a stunningly sophisticated level, create beauty in countless ways, and lead lives of immense metaphysical meaning. We are amazing creatures!

If there is one idea from the environmental far-left that Democrats should vehemently, publicly reject it is this notion that humans are in some sense an invasive species on the planet and as a threat to what would otherwise be idyllic pristine nature. This Malthusian vision wants fewer human being because it sees human not as the heroes of the story but as the villains. It’s misanthropic to the core. We as Democrats must reject that as vigorously as we possibly can. We should celebrate humanity.

This is not just important in its own right, it’s a marker of how we as a people are doing spiritually. Pope Francis, as he so often did, got to the heart of the matter.

He was right, and we would do well to listen to his wisdom. Don’t we want to be a happy society? Don’t we want to act like a happy society?

Children are good. They embody playfulness, curiosity, and possibility in their purest forms. Their laughter transforms the ordinary spaces into the joyful. Night at the Museum is an ‘pretty good, but not amazing’ movie. But watching it with a 5-year-old who considers it the funniest, most epic adventure is nothing short of magic. Children represent our collective future, carrying forward our dreams of what society can be. When people like me talk about reducing the cost of living and creating abundance, that’s not some Excel spreadsheet thing; that’s about helping people live rich, meaningful lives. Children are a huge part of that.

Families are good. Humans are individuals but we do not exist as atoms outside of webs of responsibility and support. Family is where those webs state. They create spaces where individuals thrive through mutual support, shared history, and collective ambition. Whether chosen or biological, families provide the foundation where values take root, resilience is forged, and love is abundant. They're the essential building blocks of communities, offering both a safety net and a launchpad for lives of meaning, connection, and upward mobility.

Marriage is a part of that. It’s an ancient, wholesome institution. A big part of the argument for gay marriage was that it was monstrous to exclude gay people from that institution. The pro-gay marriage argument was about equality, but it was also explicitly a pro-marriage argument. Marriage is good.

Along these lines, Democrats need to get more comfortable talking in the language of what is good and what is not good. That’s not just helpful to individuals; it’s smart politics. Matthew Yglesias recently made this point well.

Particularly for young men, there is a success sequence that needs to be preached by society, including by society’s progressives. The modern success sequence goes like this:

1) Finish high school.

2) Don’t get mixed up in hard drugs or crime.

3) Go to college, into the skilled trades, or into the military.

4) Be normal (no red pills, no misogyny, no political extremism).

5) Keep vices – alcohol/marijuana, video games, sports gambling- in check. Occasional use in moderation is fine, but don’t let them take over your life.

6) Get married.

7) Have children.

8) Maintain friends.

9) Exercise.

10) Travel and/or have hobbies.

These are the building blocks of a happy life. Do those things and you’re almost certainly going to be fine.

Part of what Democrats need to do to be more electorally successful is to socially moderate. Unapologetically adopting these kinds of attitudes about humanity, children, families, and success sequences would be a great start.

Though this is, to some degree, conservative-coded, it doesn’t need to be. Most people want children. Only 8% of people between 30–49 and only 16% of those 18–29 say that they do not want children at all.

Image Credit: Gallup.

There is a sizable gap between how many children that women say they would like to have and how many they end up actually having. Fifty-five percent of parenting age Americans report having fewer children than they would ideally like with affordability being the mostly commonly given reason for why they aren’t. Young men and women cite childcare being too expensive as the number one reason they don’t have as many children as they would like. Seventy-three percent of parenting age Americans, including 83% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans that age, say that the federal government should provide more support for families with children.

This is also a political opening for Democrats because many Republicans can’t seem to be pro-children without being weird and/or mean-spirited about it. See the fact Elon Musk has at least 14 children with at least 4 different women and refers to his kids as a “legion.” See how JD Vance’s cruelly taunting women without children as “childless cat ladies.” It should not be difficult for Democrats to be pro-children and more humane, thoughtful, and normal about it than this.

Beyond culture though, the problem still remains that raising children is very expensive. For all the ways in which this issue is wrapped up in American culture, in terms of parents’ lived experience, it remains at root a cost-of-living issue. There are a number of policy ideas around baby bonds, the Child Tax Credit, parental leave, and public safety/infrastructure that I’ll examine next week, but today I want to explain how Democrats can increase the availability of daycare.

Pursuing Daycare Abundance

Childcare is in fact very expensive, regardless of type.

Image Credit: Department of Labor.

To help bring these costs down and to increase access to daycare, cities, states, and the federal government need to all do what they can to increase the supply of daycare. Here are some ideas that can advance that mission.

Idea 1: Zoning Reform for Daycares

Childcare providers who want to build or expand a facility must often navigate a maze of zoning laws and pay expensive permit fees. In Utah, zoning laws can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of building a new childcare center; for some would-be providers this is such a prohibitive cost that they do not enter the market at all. Those kinds or rules are unhelpful.

On the bright side, some cities are enacting reforms that can inspire reform elsewhere. For example, some cities have regulations that mandate a minimum distance between each childcare facilities; these kinds of regulations of unhelpful and it is good to see cities like Seattle repealing them. Some cities have onerous parking requirements for daycare centers; Austin used to have those but has repealed them. Likewise, Dallas is expanding where small daycares are allowed to include essentially all residential neighborhoods. Austin is doing something similar.

Image Credit: NBC5 DFW.

Oregon is considering a bill that would go even further and doing that for the entire state and ensuring that local governments cannot place extra restrictions or fees on them. Another potential promising idea is for cities to allow daycare or preschool anywhere that ground floor retail is permitted. Seattle now allows a version of that.

Idea 2: Tax Credits for Childcare

At the federal level, Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Katie Britt (R-AL) in the Senate and Salud Carbajal (D-CA-24) and Mike Lawler (R-NY-17) in the House have introduced two strong bills on the childcare: the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act and the Child Care Workforce Act. The former would increase the tax credit for employer-provided childcare from 25% to 50% of qualified childcare expenditures, increase the maximum credit amount from $150,000 to $500,000, allow for jointly owned childcare facilities, and provide other benefits to small businesses. It also makes the Dependent Care Assistance Program more robust and increases the Household and Dependent Care Credit. The latter would create a competitive grant program for states to supplement childcare workers’ wages. Given the extent to which turnover is a major challenge in childcare, this is a smart approach. The bill also has a provision that says that 90% of funding must go to childcare worker wages and no more than 10% can go to administrative costs. Another smart move. These are excellent supply-side bills that Congress should pass immediately.

Idea 3: Occupational Licensing

Some amount of occupational licensing for childcare workers is necessary and unavoidable. If you’re going to be working with little kids, you need to be able to pass a background check and have a clean criminal record. A certain amount of regulation in this space is non-negotiable. But many states go too far. In California, childcare workers must have 12 semester credits of postsecondary course work. In Vermont, it is a de facto requirement that childcare workers have a college degree. In Washington DC, childcare workers must have a college degree. It is not only insulting to say to high school educated people that they are not educated enough to take care of little kids, it contributes to the shortage of childcare workers.

Additionally, licensing frequently does not carry over from state to state and so a childcare worker who moves across state lines may have to get recertified. States should consider how tightening occupational licensing of childcare workers can, inadvertently, constrain the supply such workers and thereby contribute to a shortage of childcare provision.

Idea 4: More Au Pairs

There are about 20,000 au pairs working in the United States. They are not allowed to work in the U.S. for more than two years, which greatly reduces the ability of au pairs who like doing the job from continuing to do it. We should increase it to four years. If someone wants to come to the United States to work in childcare and that’s a benefit to the host families, that helps increase the supply of childcare services in the United States.

Moreover, in 2019, under the Trump administration, the State Department placed a moratorium on growth of the au pair program. This is a clear, direct barrier to American families being able to host au pairs. That moratorium should be rescinded. Moreover, expanding the au pair program does not cost taxpayer money. Even though the direct beneficiaries of au pair services are usually upper-class, parents with children in daycare benefit too because each child who is being cared for by an au pair puts less demand on childcare services.

Idea 5: Small Reforms to Child-Teacher Ratio Requirements

For understandable safety reasons, state governments have rules around child-to-teacher ratios. For example, it is very common for states to mandate that infant classrooms have no more than a 4:1 ratio. In other words, one teacher cannot be looking after more than 4 infants. As the children get older, the ratios relax a bit. So, for example, in Vermont, once the children in the classroom are 2 years old, the ratio increases to 5:1. At 3 years old, it goes up to 10:1. Studies show inconclusive results about the impact of these ratios on childhood development outcomes. States could consider small reforms of these requirements around the margins where that does not compromise children’s safety. These kinds of reform can’t go too far, but given the labor intensity of childcare, every bit helps.

The Deepest Form of Abundance

Policies do not exist in a vacuum; they exist inside a moral framework. Democrats’ family policy moral framework should be guided by these simple but profound truths: humans are good, children are good, families are good. By embracing these truths without hesitation, Democrats can build a platform that makes raising children more affordable while honoring the richness they bring to our lives. This isn't just smart politics. It is a recognition that helping families thrive strengthens the very foundations of a society where all can live meaningful, connected lives. That’s the deepest form of Abundance there is.

Part II on this comes out next week. Stay tuned.

-GW