During his first term, President Biden proposed spending $350 billion over five years to create a nationwide system of free child care. But Republican opposition to his “budget-busting” initiative blocked its enactment. On Tuesday, however, Biden made it clear that he was not giving up. In a meeting with union leaders, he insisted that child care, and the larger “care economy,” will be an administration priority if he gets reelected in November.
Not only is he right on the merits, but his repeated commitment to universal child care on the campaign trail could easily make a crucial difference in the small number swing states that will decide the 2024 election. To see why, it is important to view the issue from a larger historical perspective.
Begin by turning back the clock to the 1960s, and consider how two great revolutions — one in education, the other in medical care — have transformed American life in ways that give universal child care a central significance that it previously did not possess.
Let’s start with education. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, only 8 percent of whites and 4 percent of Blacks had graduated from college — while 50 percent were high school drop-outs. During the 2020s, 50 percent of whites and 38 percent of Blacks will gain a college degree by the age of 25, and many others will receive associate degrees at community colleges — only 10 percent will drop out of high school.
Generation Z also looks forward to a very different future. Thanks to medical advances, they can expect to live until they are 90 or even older; in the 1960s, the typical American died at 70. This double revolution — in life expectancy and educational opportunity — has transformed the very nature of the postmodern struggle for a meaningful existence.
Seventy years ago, people found themselves in a race against time. When they left school as teenagers, a short-run failure to find a half-decent job threatened to destroy medium- and long-term chances for a successful career. The same was true when it came to family life. Given 70-year expectancies, young adults had only 50 years to find a mate, raise kids and see their children grow up and prosper as young adults. It is no surprise, then, that the median age for first marriages in the 1960s was 21 for women and 23 for men. What is more, it was the wife who typically sacrificed her career and stayed at home to take care of the kids.
Nowadays, the median age for marriage is 30 for women and 32 for men. Rather than racing against time, most Americans confront a range of college courses and teachers who provide skills and insights that equip them for a variety of real-world jobs. They also encounter a host of fellow students with different backgrounds from their own — offering up the possibility of new forms of social relationships that challenge the inclinations and values inherited from their family, neighbors and high school companions.
Different people will respond to these challenges in different ways. Nevertheless, they are no longer engaged in a desperate race against time. Once they leave college, they typically engage in more years of exploration of real-world opportunities before making decisive commitments to a definite career and a particular lover. It is only when they reach their early 30s that Americans end their “age of exploration” and enter a new phase of the postmodern life cycle during their 40s and 50s. During this “age of achievment,” they struggle to fulfill the demands of their bosses at work and their intimate companions at home.
Easier said than done. Indeed, 50 percent of American marriages currently end in divorce. These break-ups have a particularly shattering impact on young children who require a stable home life to develop a sense of self worth. Nevertheless, the United States has failed to take this postmodern tragedy seriously. Before the COVID crisis, preschool facilities were available to only 40 percent of America’s three-year-olds, 68 percent of four-year-olds and 86 percent of five-year-olds.
In contrast, Europeans have been far more successful in sustaining family values in the postmodern world. The French have led the way. When Biden entered the White House in 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron was confronting a very different reality. During the previous quarter-century, his predecessors had created a nationwide system of free child care, enabling parents to send their three-year-olds to neighborhood centers called École Maternelles.
The Écoles are staffed by personnel with special training in child psychology, and when kids enter their local center at the age of three, they are organized into small groups under the guidance of particular counselors who engage in daily sessions with them as they move onward into the programs designed for four- and five-year-olds.
As a consequence, tutors get to know each child well enough to appreciate their anxieties and help them build up the self-confidence they need to confront the challenges of the first-grade classroom.
These Écoles have generated a remarkably positive response over the decades. Although they were under no legal obligation to do so, parents began sending their kids to them in overwhelming numbers. By 2015, 99 percent of eligible children were entering Écoles — and President Macron responded to COVID with a series of ambitious initiatives that deepened the Ecoles’ effort to deal with the epidemic’s on-going impact on vulnerable youngsters.
Remarkably enough, Biden responded to the COVID crisis in the same way. He called it his “Build Back Better” — and as I mentioned, urged Congress to construct a nationwide system of free child care over the next five years. However, the opposition of right-wing Republicans proved to be an insurmountable roadblock to the measure’s passage.
Until now.
To be sure, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the significance of Biden’s Tuesday speech — which will be quickly forgotten unless he makes the Freedom Caucus’s veto of Build Back Better a centerpiece of his campaign. If he does so, however, his repeated and high-visibility commitment to universal child care could well decide the outcome of the November election.
After all, vast numbers of American families are struggling to prevent the break-up of their marriages. Sending their kids to child care helps them prevent their divorce from ever taking place. Even if a couple does break up, the social workers at the centers will help ease the shattering burden on their kids.
Obviously, Biden’s campaign for child care won’t be enough to convince committed Trumpists to abandon their champion. But the outcome of the coming election will depend on the decision of undecided voters in a few swing states — who may well be impressed by Biden’s long-standing commitment to child care, especially when compared to Donald Trump’s blatant shows of contempt for family values.
By providing Biden with a popular mandate for child care, the 2024 election will make an enormous difference in the lives of countless Americans over the coming decades. Trump’s defeat will provoke many Republicans to rethink their Freedom Caucus commitments. As they look forward to the 2028 presidential election, do they really want to nominate a candidate who will travel down the same demagogic pathway that led to Trump’s repeated defeat?
Only time will tell. But at least Trump won’t be in the White House providing his party with a definitive answer.
Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale and the author, most recently, of “The Postmodern Predicament” (Yale, 2024).