The stay-at-home mommy wars: What both Obama and Republicans get wrong

It's about class, not culture

(Image credit: "Il Desinare Della Vedova," by Gaetano Chierici. (Christie's Images/Corbis))

President Obama's tax proposal to help working families had barely left the presidential podium before critics pounced. And with that began the stay-at-home mommy wars. But don't be fooled into thinking this is a typical left vs. right argument about culture: it's about a bipartisan failure to help the lower class.

Obama’s proposal would bulk up the tax credit for child care expenses and provide a new tax credit for families with two earners. Because the tax credits would be of no use to families in which one parent stays home and doesn’t earn a taxable income, conservative journalists saw the plan as implicitly derogatory to traditional families and stay-at-home moms. The proposal is a declaration that "moms who stay at home with their children are less valuable than moms who work for pay," according to Tim Carney. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry called it a progressive statement "about what the good society looks like" — and it’s families in which both parents work.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.