Let’s Fight for Universal Childcare

Let’s Fight for Universal Childcare

It’s good for the economy and consistent with our values.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

A few weeks ago, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt wrote a compelling New York Times piece endorsing “day care for all.” Noting that childcare is “one of the biggest costs a family faces,” often surpassing even college tuition, Pollitt argued that a lack of affordable childcare is a problem on par with challenges that receive far more attention from leading progressives. “So why isn’t it on the front burner of the revitalized left?” she asked.

The question turned out to be prescient. Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) unveiled her proposal for universal childcare in the United States. While other candidates have discussed the need for affordable childcare—and it was one of Hillary Clinton’s priorities in 2016—Warren’s plan is clearly the most ambitious proposal to date. It would establish a network of federally funded, locally run childcare centers across the nation. Enrollment would be completely free for millions of children and affordable for all, with the total cost per family capped at 7 percent of a family’s income, no matter the number of kids. The centers would be staffed by qualified care providers, who would be paid similarly to teachers. Access would be guaranteed, but families with the means to choose other options would be free to do so. And it would be fully paid for with revenue from the wealth tax Warren has called for on households with a net worth greater than $50 million.

Warren’s proposal should spark an overdue and necessary conversation about a problem that leaders in both parties have long neglected. More than half of Americans now live in childcare “deserts,” according to the Center for American Progress, including significant majorities of rural and Latino families. Compared with the rest of the world, the United States spends pathetically little on family benefits, ranking second-to-last among developed nations. “This dearth of family benefits leads to two cruel outcomes,” writes Matt Bruenig, whose People’s Policy Project recently published its own set of ideas for addressing the childcare crisis. “It denies many people the ability to have the families that they want and inflicts financial ruin on many of those who go through with parenthood despite the lack of social support.”

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

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Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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