Progressives must show parents their vision for home-based childcare

Real momentum is building around efforts to reform our country’s childcare system, which parents have told policymakers is too costly and inaccessible for the vast majority of American working families.

New York City just announced a new program that will provide free childcare to more than 10,000 children. Less than a year ago, New Mexico became the first state to offer universal, no-cost childcare regardless of family income.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) recently introduced the Free Child Care for America Act , one of many 2028 hopefuls signaling their support for a universal childcare platform. National polling shows that more than 80 percent of parents nationwide support more federal funding for childcare.

The continued success of this movement will be decided on cultural terrain. There is plenty of data that shows how beneficial accessible childcare is to families. However, how families care for their children isn’t just a policy issue informed by evidence. Childcare touches on the most intimate elements of family wellbeing, and those who want to expand it must navigate the complex narratives swirling on this issue if they want to build durable support.

Right now, the voices speaking most clearly to the desire for at-home care are pronatalist and regressive, favoring traditional gender hierarchies to grow the population at all costs. That is a problem, because these efforts will only benefit a small, privileged sliver of society. Progressives cannot get boxed out on this issue.

Our organization, the FrameWorks Institute , has been studying the cultural mindsets that shape Americans’ understanding of child and family issues. Our research shows that engaging in policy conversations about children without the ability to see and navigate entrenched narratives and prevailing mindsets about parenting, children, gender and whose responsibility it is to care for kids, can stall long-term progress for families.

Ensuring childcare solutions respond to the realities and needs of families is key. There is mounting evidence that not all parents want center-based care, especially for infants. A new survey of 4,306 New York City parents and caregivers by the Robin Hood Foundation and New America’s New Practice Lab suggests that many parents want something different. Only 13 percent favored center-based programs for infants.

Much of the discussion about this topic in New York and elsewhere is focused on childcare centers and not enough on home care, despite the fact that large numbers of families use these care options, and they are closing at a disturbing rate . Home care is disproportionately used by working class families and families of color. For millions of U.S. families, home care settings are more convenient and offer more comfort and peace of mind than centers.

Creating solutions will require bipartisan consensus. Conservatives talk about home care often and are speaking to this need in a way that makes many parents feel heard.

We’ve watched pronatalist leaders like Vice President Vance make home-based care a centerpiece of conservative family policy, arguing that the government should reward people for having multiple children, for women staying at home to care for them and for public support going only to those raising kids within marriage . A new website launched by the Trump administration, called Moms.gov , echoes this rhetoric.

Childcare advocates must not let pronatalists own the conversation on in-home care. When pronatalists control the in-home care narrative, it becomes increasingly acceptable for benefits to be tied to marital status which, because marriage rates differ sharply by income and race , channels resources disproportionately to higher-income and white households, leaving out single-parent and low-income families.

Home-based childcare needs to be front and center for progressives like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or else they risk alienating many caregivers and ceding this ground. It’s a problem if Trump is perceived as making it easier to care for babies at home, and progressives are seen as creating barriers to this form of care or not mentioning it at all.

It’s not that Mamdani and other leaders are totally leaving home care out of their policy plans, but rather that they aren’t including this type of care when they are out talking about child and family wellbeing. Leaders should go out of their way to prioritize home care — in their policies and their communications. Doing so shows that they understand what families want and are doing what they can to meet their needs.

A childcare scale-up built around classroom seats and enrollment slots overlooks those who rely on grandparents, neighbors and licensed family childcare providers, especially in immigrant neighborhoods and communities of color. A childcare system that works requires prioritizing care in the settings families choose.

The growing momentum around childcare is creating real opportunities for change. If the pronatalist movement is left to dominate the narrative around in-home care, we will end up with a system designed for the families of some mythic past rather than those who exist right here, right now in this country.

If we want what’s happening in New York City to succeed and cascade to other parts of our nation, our policies — and our narratives — must reflect the full range of childcare options that families need.

Moira O’Neil is senior vice president of programs and Nat Kendall-Taylor is chief executive officer at the FrameWorks Institute.