Vice President JD Vance is promoting a Trump administration plan to siphon off federal money that helps working parents afford childcare and use it to subsidize parents who stay at home. The man who ran for office mocking “childless cat ladies” is now trying to stir up a cat fight between working and stay-at-home moms. That’s not remarkable coming from a federal government run by social media trolls. But the main effect of the actual policy Vance is promoting will be to make the lives of already stressed working class families, especially in Wisconsin, even harder, more expensive and noticeably worse than before.
Childcare funding has been in crisis in Wisconsin ever since the pandemic relief money that briefly stabilized providers ran out. Without that money, which “prevented system collapse,” according to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, supporting more than 430,000 children in nearly 6,000 programs, parents are priced out of care and one in four providers say they will likely have to close their doors.
Unlike Massachusetts and Vermont, Wisconsin does not treat childcare as a state budget priority. Ours is one of only a handful of states, including Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, and Ohio, that failed to spend any money on childcare beyond what was required to draw down federal dollars, according to a 2025 report by the advocacy group ChildCare Aware. In 2026, the state created a new school readiness program for 4-year-olds. It was a first step toward acknowledging the needs of preschoolers and their parents. But it did nothing to address the massive shortage in care for infants and toddlers.
That’s all fine with JD Vance, who wrote on X that “normal Americans care more about their families than their jobs, and want a family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”
But Vance is not offering to do anything about the fact that the U.S. is the only wealthy nation on Earth that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, even though 68% of mothers with children under 6 are employed. Nor is he promoting the kind of high-quality early childhood education system that allows parents in Denmark, after their six months of paid parental leave, to enroll their preschoolers in beautiful, enriching childcare programs they don’t have to feel guilty about.
Instead, what Vance is proposing is to take an already paltry federal childcare subsidy and make working parents fight over crumbs with nonworking parents. Mainly, his aim seems to be to punish single parents. That’s not going to leave anyone in good shape — least of all children.
One of the saddest aspects of the attack on childcare is that very recently parents, educators, business leaders and politicians of both political parties were finally coming together around the idea that childcare is an essential public good that requires public support.
The “mommy wars” attack Vance wants to revive is long out of date. It has been decades since most American families had the luxury of subsisting on a single wage-earner’s income, trad wife fantasies notwithstanding.
Another major recent breakthrough is policymakers’ realization that the magic of the free market is not going to provide childcare parents can afford.
“It was the Biden administration that put a ton of money into childcare during COVID, and we learned from that,” says Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. “The lesson was not just the importance of keeping childcare open so that essential workers could work, but the other piece that’s really interesting is that it demonstrated what can positively happen in childcare when you put a little more money into it.”
Thanks to direct payments to providers during the pandemic, center closures dropped off, the number of teachers leaving the workforce slowed down, tuition stopped climbing and, Schmidt says, “this industry for the first time was finally able to say, ‘Our work is important. It is essential to the functioning of our country. It’s worth investing in, because if you invest in it, these positive things can happen.”
Then came Trump.
Schmidt calls the rollout of Trump policies that slashed support for families “death by 1,000 cuts.” During the second Trump administration, cuts to food assistance, Medicaid and Head Start, along with the federal government’s move to loosen safety standards and increase staff ratios in childcare centers have taken a huge combined toll on Wisconsin families.
If it were just ideological — if the Trump administration were actually pursuing the kinds of pronatalist policies that make getting married and having children more attractive, as Vance likes to claim, it wouldn’t be as bad. But instead, while spouting rhetoric about valuing families, this administration is subjecting little kids and their parents to more and more misery.
Wisconsin could do more to protect vulnerable kids. Before leaving the Capitol to hit the campaign trail, state legislators failed to pass a bill that would have used state money to fill the gap after federal childcare stabilization funds lapsed. That set off a vicious cycle, says Paula Drew of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. Subsidies for families were cut and their out-of-pocket payments skyrocketed, so cash-strapped parents withdrew their kids from care. Under-enrollment meant less revenue for childcare centers, so they raised their rates. “It just sort of snowballed,” Drew says. “Programs said things like, ‘We’re gonna have to lower salaries for staff.’ … so I think we’re going to lose our educators, and in fact I think we’ve already lost a big percentage of our skilled, seasoned educators.”
An unintended consequence of the state’s investment in 4-year-old pre-K is that it creates a disincentive to provide care for infants and toddlers, which is already more expensive, Drew says. “Wisconsin serves very few infants and toddlers in regulated care,” she says. “And now, with additional funding going into the Get Kids Ready pre-K program, we expect that to be even lower a year from now.”
To make matters worse, the state no longer has a surplus of federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds, which it has used to cover some childcare costs for low-income families.
Sooner or later, Wisconsin is going to have to start dedicating state revenue to childcare. Schmidt and Drew hope that, with a new governor and a new Legislature, Wisconsin will use the state surplus, payroll taxes or a tax on hemp products and gambling, as Louisiana has done, to subsidize childcare. Only then can Wisconsin reduce the astronomical tuition rates that parents pay ($13,000 for home care and $17,400 for center-based care, according to state data), give providers a better wage (currently $13.55 per hour), and stop the wave of childcare closures.
They especially want the state to shore up disappearing infant and toddler care and retain experienced teachers — not just by giving them a raise but also by allowing them to continue to get higher education “and make this a profession, not just a fleeting step to something else,” says Drew.
“We need supply of care; supply means educators that can work in programs. And then we want to help parents pay for care on the demand side. … You can’t do one and not the other, because it simply won’t work,” says Drew. “You can’t just help parents pay for care, but not tend to the supply of care available. And you can’t just tend to the supply of care available, but pretend you don’t see that parents are literally going into poverty to try to pay for childcare.”
“Childcare is infrastructure,” says Schmidt. “If we turned around and said to parents with 5-year-olds, you’ve got to start paying $17,000 a year for your child to be in school, we would see empty classrooms, right? We treat these as two very dramatically different concerns. But all of it is about families’ ability to work outside the home, impact the economy, all those kinds of things. “
It’s also about having a decent society that values families and takes good care of children. That’s the kind of society we need to come together and focus on, instead of being distracted by the rage-baiting bluster of internet trolls.
Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.