JD Vance Wants To Take Federal Dollars To Fund Trad Wife Fantasy [Op-Ed]

The Trump administration recently released a draft of a new plan for childcare in America — one that would reward married stay-at-home moms (it’s never really dads, is it?) at the expense of single parents, working parents, and, of course, Black and Brown women and children. 

Vice President JD Vance, whose views in the last decade have flip-flopped more than a mattress in a brothel, is currently in his conservative Catholic era, where “traditional family values” rule the day. 

So, no surprise, VP JD is a big advocate of the new proposal. 

In 2021, Vance co-wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal saying that daycare can harm children (and here we thought it helped with socialization), and he is clearly of the belief that “Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent.”

He champions the proposed changes to the $12 billion Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes the care of more than 1.3 million children (up through age 13).

Started during the Clinton administration, the Health and Human Services Department fund was created to help low-income and working-class parents afford child care so they could work or go to school, according to the New York Times.

The new policy, which would most likely not have to be approved by Congress, would open that $12 billion pot up to married parents of a certain income who stay at home with their children.

And yes, you read that right: this only applies to married parents. Unmarried couples in which one parent stays at home would not qualify. Single parents who do not work but have children would not qualify. 

Moreover, since the plan does not put any extra money into the fund,  it could wind up helping these “trad families” at the expense of Black, brown,  and working-class single mothers, who are already facing a dire childcare crisis in this country.

The Times reports that about 80% of the 870,000 families who currently get the child care subsidies are headed by single working parents, most of them mothers; the trad folk would now have access to those funds, and states would get to choose who gets said funds. Even conservative think tanks believe this idea is a bust.

“Expanding the eligibility without increasing funding would mean more parents competing for the same dollars, and leaving more parents— particularly single working parents—worse off,” said Patrick T. Brown, of the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, according to the Times.

The idea of paying parents to stay home was outlined in (surprise, surprise) Project 2025, which seems to be driving much of this administration’s policies.

But clearly this is a very specific vision of parenthood — an upper-middle-class, white male-dominated one — where folks are married, the man is the big breadwinner, and his wife stays home and minds the kids. But the way these incels who tend to believe this stuff be moving — I can’t see them even getting near a woman, much less marrying and starting a family with one. 

Alas, I digress. And we regress.

SEE ALSO:

New York City Releases 1st Ever Racial Equity Plan

Trump Policy Punishes Schools Giving Black Students Scholarships