For millions of American families, child care has become one of the defining affordability challenges of modern life. In communities across the country, the cost of care now rivals a mortgage payment or in-state college tuition. Parents are delaying having children or cobbling together unreliable arrangements simply because they cannot find affordable care that fits their family’s needs.
Yet for years, Washington has responded to this challenge with the same failed formula: more mandates, more bureaucracy, and more federal micromanagement — paired with calls for ever-larger taxpayer subsidies to offset the cost of these failed policies.
The results speak for themselves. Costs continue to rise. Child care slots continue to disappear. Waitlists grow longer. And small providers are being buried under layers of bureaucracy from both federal and state governments.
American families deserve a different approach.
At the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), we believe child care policy should empower families, not dictate choices to them. Parents should be free to choose the care arrangement that works best for their children and not be limited to government-preferred options.
That support should include the full suite of options including child care centers, home-based providers, faith-based programs, care from relatives, or having one parent stay home with young children. Flexibility matters because America is a large country. What works for families in rural Idaho may not work for families in Philadelphia.
That is why ACF is advancing reforms that give states greater flexibility to improve affordability, expand access, and make existing federal child care dollars work better for more families. We are restoring flexibility to states and reducing federal pressure to prioritize rigid contract models over vouchers that allow parents to choose the provider that best meets their needs.
We are also giving states greater latitude to design cost-sharing systems and workforce policies that reflect local economic realities instead of forcing one-size-fits-all federal formulas onto every community in America.
And we are reaffirming that faith-based providers, neighborhood programs, family-run child care businesses, grandparents, relatives, neighbors, and stay-at-home parents all can play a vital role in caring for America’s children. For too long, many of these caregivers have faced unnecessary barriers to participating in federally supported programs. They deserve equal treatment and should not be sidelined by ideological or regulatory preferences coming out of either Washington or state capitols.
But while our reforms restore state flexibility, the choices states make will matter enormously.
Too many states have saddled providers with rising compliance costs, mounting paperwork, and endless regulatory uncertainty. The result is predictable: fewer providers participate, fewer child care slots become available, and families face fewer choices and higher prices.
None of this means abandoning standards or accountability. Health and safety protections and fraud prevention matter. But there is a profound difference between maintaining reasonable safeguards and imposing rigid federal mandates that ignore local realities, reduce supply, and drive up costs.
The current regulatory environment is unsustainable. In one example often cited by providers, regulations were interpreted so rigidly that a child care worker allegedly could not peel a banana for a child because of food preparation rules. Anecdotes like this illustrate why providers consistently cite cumulative regulatory burdens as a major factor in deciding whether to remain open.
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At the same time, too many states have adopted lax oversight practices that make fraud easier to commit and harder to detect. Every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar taken away from families who need child care assistance. State policies and practices are critical to ensuring federal child care subsidies are used prudently and effectively. Families are exhausted by years of rising costs, shrinking options, and federal micromanagement.
Our approach is more practical and more durable. The federal government should establish broad guardrails that protect taxpayer dollars and protect against fraud while trusting parents to make the decisions that best fit their families’ needs. If states implement these reforms effectively, existing federal child care resources will serve hundreds of thousands more families.
And when paired with broader pro-family policies — including an expanded child tax credit and stronger incentives for employer-supported child care — we can begin to reverse the affordability crisis confronting working parents.
That is what a pro-family agenda looks like.