Should the Government Provide Benefits to Stay-at-Home Moms?

September 9, 2026

Should the government help fund stay-at-home parenting? The Trump administration has drafted a plan that would permit public money to be directed toward parents who choose to care for their children at home. Rather than launching a fresh program, the idea would repurpose the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), a policy established during the Clinton era, and alter who is eligible so that married couples earning beneath a certain income threshold could qualify.

The CCDF, created during the Clinton era, was designed to assist low-income parents—households earning less than 85 percent of their state’s median income (or in some states, 60 percent)—who work. It helps fund care for children up to age 13 and offset the cost of care for about 1.3 million children. CCDF dollars can cover daycare centers, home-based care, after-school programs, and, in certain cases, relatives and neighbors who meet state criteria. Parents do not receive funds for looking after their own children. “Under the current rules, most of the money goes to states, which then pass it along to families or providers through vouchers or direct deposits to child-care providers,” according to The New York Times.

The Trump administration—and Vice President J.D. Vance, in particular—are pursuing a very specific communications tactic: endorsing the stay‑at‑home parent as a traditional, commendable choice. Alongside the so‑called baby bonus and what are billed as Trump Accounts, the plan is meant to signal to working‑class families that this administration—unlike opponents viewed as out of touch—truly cares about ordinary people facing real financial pressures.

The snag is that the proposal is poorly crafted.

First, broadening eligibility without increasing funding simply dilutes the benefit for those who currently rely on it. At present, the program disburses roughly $9,000 per child each year; if eligibility expands substantially, those benefits would likely shrink.

Second, the income cutoffs are sharp rather than phased, as Patrick T. Brown of the Ethics and Public Policy Center notes:

Third, the structure of the plan does not obviously promote staying at home; at best it could deter work in some cases: “Providing cash to daycares for working parents encourages work,” observes Lyman Stone on X. “Depositing money monthly into a household and then clawing it back if a dad earns a promotion clearly undermines mobility. Moreover, the program isn’t aimed at families raising their own children at home; it targets one-earner households. Plenty of two-earner households forgo childcare, while many one-earner households rely on it. If the goal is to support home-based parenting, great — but paying women not to earn an income doesn’t accomplish that.”

Personally, I think there should be more cultural support for parents who stay home with their kids. As things stand, the pattern is a U-shaped curve: mothers at the very bottom and the very top of the income distribution are likelier to remain at home, while those in the middle incomes often do not.

Whether public policy should actively steer that choice is unclear to me. And one point I’m certain about: this particular policy change would likely fall short of its stated aims. Perhaps the most striking thing about the proposal is that it has managed to rally much of the policy‑savvy right against it: almost every conservative commentator who covers family policy identifies serious flaws in the design.

I’ll suggest Hayek was onto something; the road to serfdom, it would seem, can be paved with well‑intended aims.

Scenes from New York: “Via an executive order issued on Monday, the mayor is launching the city’s first Office of Worker Power to help workers “get informed, connected and organized,” according to an administration announcement. The office will be directed by Tony Perlstein, a veteran union organizer who previously worked on the docks in Bayonne, New Jersey,” reports The New York Times. “‘We intend to provide opportunities for working‑class New Yorkers to learn about their right to form unions and what it means to build power,’ Mr. Perlstein said. ‘We’ll connect workers with groups that can help them grow that power.'”

Zohran Mamdani has spoken about boosting “union density”—the share of city workers who belong to a union—so this move appears to be a step toward that goal.

QUICK TAKES

  • From Anthropic’s alignment lead:
  • “Iran’s oil export revenue is drying up as a U.S. naval blockade strangles shipments from the Persian Gulf and offshore stockpiles feeding China dwindle, putting more pressure on Tehran’s battered economy,” reports The Wall Street Journal. No Iranian crude has crossed the blockade since it was reinstated by the U.S. Navy in mid-July, according to ship tracker Kpler. Iran is still loading small amounts of oil onto tankers, but those barrels remain trapped inside the Gulf.
  • Here for this nun who sits with unaccompanied kids at their deportation hearings.
  • “Evidence that bans are effective has never existed in the scientific literature, said Lisa Bartnikas, an allergist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School,” reports The Washington Post. “Several studies, including her own on Massachusetts public schools, have found that schoolwide food allergen bans have little to no effect on the incidence of allergic reactions.”
  • I am a few chapters into Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right by my colleague, Stephanie Slade, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Seriously, buy it if you haven’t already. I’ve become Russell Kirk–pilled.
  • “Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois is leading a new political group that plans to spend at least $20 million this fall to help Democrats in battleground races in the midterm elections. The effort could help Mr. Pritzker, a prominent Trump critic and billionaire who is seeking a third term as Illinois governor, raise his national profile before a potential 2028 presidential bid. The group, Ready for the Fight PAC, will soon run ads targeting Brandon Herrera, a hard-line Republican and YouTuber running in a red-leaning Texas border district,” reports The New York Times.
  • “Both labs acknowledge the risks but highlight the upsides,” writes Kelsey Piper, in “Losing Control of AI is Actually the Plan,” which is very much worth your time: “Researchers envision a world in the very near future where humans are barely able to understand the rapid-fire progress happening in their data centers, a world where key decisions about the next generation of models are made by the current generation of models—because the decisions are too complex for humans to follow without the guidance of the supervising AIs. ‘As the systems become more capable, the results become harder to interpret,’ OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki wrote in a blog post released on Sunday. Progress on model improvement will then proceed extremely fast and without meaningful human oversight—unless humanity comes together to change course. This transition sometimes gets called recursive self-improvement (RSI). The companies believe it is right around the corner. ‘Based on internal results, I have a strong expectation that this speed of progress could be sustained into recursive self-improvement,’ Pachocki wrote on Sunday.”
  • I like this idea:

Natalie Foster

I’m a political writer focused on making complex issues clear, accessible, and worth engaging with. From local dynamics to national debates, I aim to connect facts with context so readers can form their own informed views. I believe strong journalism should challenge, question, and open space for thoughtful discussion rather than amplify noise.

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