The universal pain of unaffordable child care

This isn't just a rich people problem

Babies.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Sudowoodo/iStock, marekuliasz/iStock)

It looks like doing something about child care will be a big part of the Democrats' 2020 campaign. Ideas like a national day care system have taken hold among liberals. And one of the party's major contenders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, already has a plan to make child care affordable and more widely available.

Conservatives are not on board with this. They often view universal child care as a niche concern for well-to-do, upwardly striving two-earner couples, and a blinkered effort at social engineering: "Incentivize one way of parenting — all parties working full time, which many parents don't even want to do — while forcing other people to pay for it," as National Review Online's Heather Wilhelm put it.

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Jeff Spross

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