Republicans and right-wingers have been presenting themselves as advocates for “family friendly” policies since the 1980s. Or I supposed the 1970s, when they presented women’s liberation as the anti-family movement. Even though 1950s housewives supposedly lived life on the easiest possible setting, those darn libbers kept insisting that a society that pushed women into the home and out of the workplace was sexist and unfair — that some women might prefer to work, or to balance work and childcare and maybe have the husband help out a little more. Feminism was a Jedi mind trick, fooling those women into thinking they could find happiness anywhere outside the home. In the words of Paul Deneen, “Liberalism posits that freeing women from the household is tantamount to liberation, but it effectively puts women and men alike into a far more encompassing bondage” It’s good old fashioned patriarchy that’s best for women. Spoiler: no, it isn’t.
As Deneen’s grumbling shows, Republicans are only pro-family when they consider it the right kind of family. It’s similar to the way “Republicans hate the real America. They love the fantasy America in their heads where women stay home pregnant, white men run everything, black people are invisible except as servants and gay people disappear into the closet.” When they say they’re pro-family they mean the fantasy ideal of “family” in their heads: husband working, wife at home with lots of (white) kids, girls growing up carefully groomed to be submissive handmaids, preferably not doing anything Manly like playing competitive sports. And nobody ever gets abortion or birth control because fantasy moms love kids and never want to stop having them. And of course, absolutely not immigrants — tearing immigrant families apart is fine.
(A brief pause here to salute the late Gloria Steinem and her long fight to improve women’s lots. For good commentary see here, here, here and here).
JD Vance is, I think, a completely hollow man. He’s fine supporting fascists like Hungary’s recently defeated Orban; if there was any career advantage in becoming a hardline Stalinist, he’d discover a deep communist commitment without batting an eye. However he has one true belief, at least, which is his raging distaste for independent women and childless women (as discussed here). Only parents have a stake in America’s future, therefore parents should get more votes. Childless women should not be leaders, plus they’re miserable and pathetic (Gloria Steinem seems way, way more happy than Vance ever has).
So it’s no surprise he’s one of the prime movers behind the Toddler administration’s new proposal to take funds that help working parents pay for child care and give them to stay-at-home married parents (if you’re a stay-at-home mom, remember, taking care of kids is an incredible, demanding job; if you’re a single mom, staying home with kids, in Republican America, means you’re a lazy bum). The NYT article says “officials are seeking to use a Health and Human Services Department fund that was created in the 1990s to help low-income and working-class parents afford child care so they could work or go to school … about 80 percent of the 870,000 families who currently get the child care subsidies have single working parents, most of them mothers, according to Health Department data.”
The article continues “In 2021, Mr. Vance co-wrote an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal contending that day care can harm children and declaring, “Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent.” He also wrote then on Twitter that “normal Americans” want a “family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap day care so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”
I agree with him, nobody wants their kids in crap day care. However the solution is to improve day care, not choke off its existence. Because the genius of this shitty plan is that it doesn’t involve added funds (it never does). It will take some of the current pot and redirect it to stay at home parents because why shouldn’t the government pay them for childcare too (which is like redirecting Medicaid funds to people who aren’t poor and sick)? That means much less money for day care which means many centers may close, which makes it even harder for moms to work. Achievement unlocked! Tellingly, if you’re a working mom who relies on a family member to provide child care, you don’t get coverage.
It is a depressing thought that the deeply misogynist Vance is a front-runner for the post-Toddler Republican presidency. And that plenty of journalists are willing to present him as the sensible conservative. As Grosse says, even for someone who wants to help stay-at-home moms, it’s a poor policy: “our federal government could do about a million and one things to help parents that would be more effective and more desired. According to the survey I cited earlier from the Institute for Family Studies, 85 percent of mothers ages 25 to 55 with children under 18 said that paid parental leave would be “extremely” or “very” helpful to them and 80 percent said that child tax credits would be extremely or very helpful to them. Lower-income moms support the tax credit at a higher rate than wealthier moms, while higher-income moms prefer parental leave, but a vast majority of both groups want both of those things. Few are asking for what Vance and the administration are proposing.”
It’s more important to Vance that working women suffer than that moms be happy.
