On September 5, like millions of parents across America, I got up, got my kids ready for school—and, as always, worried about childcare. “Who’s doing drop-off today,” I wondered to myself. “Will I have to leave that meeting early to get to pick-up? How are we going to make this work?”
But, unlike those millions of parents, after drop off, I came home, put on a suit, and had a rare opportunity: I got to ask former President Donald Trump what he plans to do to fix the problem.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Trump’s rambling, word-salad of an answer to my question at the Economic Club of New York set off a firestorm. We’ve learned something about Trump: he has no plan to address the childcare crisis. That much is obvious. But we’ve also learned something about this election: childcare is, for the first time in a national campaign, a top economic issue.
To be clear, I didn’t ask Trump a gotcha question. In fact, it was a softball: “If you win in November, can you commit to legislation making childcare affordable? And, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Name one bill—that’s all. He could have said he’d expand the child tax credit, or reinstate the pandemic-era funding for childcare centers that expired last year, for starters.
Instead, Trump took a hard pivot into his tariff policy, before concluding, “as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”
But when childcare costs more than rent in all 50 states, when it’s costing our country $122 billion each year in lost earnings, productivity, and revenue, and when childcare prices are rising at nearly double the pace of overall inflation—there’s no question that it is expensive and families are feeling the pain.
Childcare is an economic issue. Full stop.
Parents already know this. They’re the ones sitting at the kitchen table planning out their budgets for the month and seeing on paper that the numbers just don’t add up. As the founder and CEO of Moms First—a movement for affordable childcare, paid family leave, and equal pay—I’ve heard from countless women forced out of the workforce because they had no other way to take care of their families. Even worse are the heart wrenching stories from moms forced to make impossible choices, like deciding between paying for day care and feeding their baby.
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Moms are drowning right now. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Trump’s comments have sparked outrage—from people on both sides of the aisle.
Trump has never treated childcare as a serious economic issue with consequences for working families. At the debate back in June, he spent more time talking about his golf game than about childcare policy. In fact, during his first term, his administration killed a bipartisan deal that would have doubled funding for childcare.
Trump is not alone. Republican leadership has never treated childcare as a serious economic issue, either. JD Vance is another obvious offender—with his delusional proposal that we fix the crisis by asking grandma to pitch in, or his equally baffling suggestion that education requirements are what is preventing people from becoming childcare workers—not the fact that we pay them less than dog walkers. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has put forward serious policy proposals and yet, every time big, transformative childcare policy is on the table, Democratic leadership has traded it away instead of making it the non-negotiable that American families deserve.
So Trump hasn’t changed—but maybe we have. Maybe this was the final straw after years of disrespect from politicians. Maybe parents are bone tired and have reached their breaking point. Maybe we’re ready to express our collective anger and disappointment at the ballot box.
As we head into the final stretch of the election, one thing is clear: Something has shifted. Childcare finally has been vaulted into the national conversation.
Candidates, take note. It’s time to treat childcare as a top economic issue because it is. When voters say that they can’t get to work because gas prices are too high, politicians take them seriously and do something about it. When parents say that they can’t get to work because daycare is too expensive, they deserve the same treatment and consideration.
And parents, what we’ve seen in the last week is that childcare can be a galvanizing issue. The biggest mistake that we could make right now is to let the moment fizzle out. Voters need to demand clear, specific childcare plans from their candidates and hold them to their promises at the polls. There’s been a lot of talk this election cycle about whether being a parent makes you more qualified to lead this country. No, you don’t need to be a parent to be president—but you do need to listen to them. And right now we’re demanding what we want, loud and clear.
