If the next 250 years are to look different from the last, childcare must become a democratic guarantee, not a private burden.
This is part of a new miniseries FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special Ms. series examining the next chapter of American democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the series explores how women and marginalized communities have shaped democratic progress, what lessons history offers for the challenges ahead, and how a more inclusive, representative and equitable democracy can be built for the next 250 years.
Universal childcare is how the United States finally stops leaving half the country behind. It is not a radical idea. It is the bare minimum that a democracy owes the people doing its most essential work.
When my parents arrived in the United States as refugees from Uganda, they came with $12 in their pockets and a belief in this country’s oldest promise: If you give America everything you have, it will not leave you behind.
I grew up holding that belief. I ran for Congress and built Girls Who Code on it. And when I became a mother, I realized that promise was never meant for us.
Motherhood in America is impossible by design. It is a feature, not a bug.
- Work ends at 6 p.m. School pickup is at 3 p.m.
- Over half of Americans are in debt because of the cost of their childcare.
- A quarter of new mothers go back to work two weeks after giving birth, still bleeding, because they have no other choice.
And when we can’t hold it all together, the culture stands ready to reprimand us: You should have planned better. You should have chosen differently. This is your fault.
It is not your fault.
… Childcare is the load-bearing wall. It is the single largest household expense for families with young children, exceeding rent and even college tuition in most states.
Mothers have been getting conned since the ink dried on the Constitution. Abigail Adams told her husband John to remember the ladies when he was drafting this country’s founding documents. The founding fathers chose not to. “All men are created equal.”
And for the ladies, power only by proxy of motherhood. Raise patriotic sons. Sustain the republic. Just don’t ask to be part of it, and don’t ask for help.
For the past 250 years, we have lived with the consequences of this original deception. And every time mothers begin to organize, gain ground or push for structural change, we are handed a culture war to distract and divide us so that we do not succeed.
In 1971, Congress passed universal childcare with bipartisan support. President Richard Nixon (R) vetoed it, calling it a threat to the American family.
Childcare was, as Hillary Clinton deftly explained to me, “an issue they wanted, not a problem to solve.”
… Women do not want to raise babies in a country that pushes their family’s heads under water instead of pulling them out.
The fight for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s failed because the conversation around our rights was manipulated into a referendum on what makes a good mother.
The Mommy Wars of the 2000s revived this debate and pitted working moms against stay-at-home moms.
Today’s culture war is no different: We ask women to choose between being a tradwife or a girlboss—two unrealistic, unattainable options that don’t reflect the economic reality of most American women.
Same con, new costume.
We have lost decades of political energy to these distractions. We are the most educated generation of women in American history, and yet we have the lowest labor market participation. Around 500,000 women left the workforce last year because of the cost of childcare. We have shortages of nurses, teachers and social workers—critical roles that artificial intelligence cannot replace. Our birth rate is at a historic low, not because of birth control or feminism gone too far, but because women do not want to raise babies in a country that pushes their family’s heads under water instead of pulling them out.
The democratic consequences are just as serious as the economic ones. When mothers are exhausted and financially vulnerable, they don’t organize. They don’t run for office, and they don’t vote at the rates they could.
You cannot have a true democracy if half its citizens are structurally barred from participating in it.
So what does a feminist, pro-democracy agenda actually require today, against these odds? One thing above all else: childcare. Universal, accessible, federally supported childcare.
Our list of battles is long and growing. Equal pay matters. Reproductive rights matter. But childcare is the load-bearing wall. It is the single largest household expense for families with young children, exceeding rent and even college tuition in most states. It is the reason women leave the workforce or earn less across their lifetime if they stay. Fix childcare and we can fix labor force participation, pay equity, political representation, birth rates and beyond.
And here is what I want every skeptic to understand: This is not a utopian ideal. I’m talking about Canada, France and Iceland. And thanks largely to female governors, we have working models right now, in American states, proving it can be done. New Mexico became the first state in the nation to pass truly universal childcare into law thanks to the leadership of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D). Earlier this year, New York’s first mom governor Kathy Hochul (D) announced a historic $2.2 billion investment that will guarantee universal pre-K statewide, and free full-day care for thousands of two-year-olds in New York City.
Neither happened by accident. Mothers organized around childcare. Women led on it. And women voters made the issue impossible to ignore.
Eighty-two percent of Americans, including nearly seven in 10 Republicans, believe federal investment in childcare works. I cannot think of another national issue with that kind of consensus. So when you hear care painted as partisan, or something that’s “just not possible,” as President Trump has decried, you’ll know better. Remember, “childcare is an issue they want, not a problem to solve.” And the culture wars have been their cover.
The midterms are coming, and I have hope that the old tricks will no longer work. Not because the con has changed, it hasn’t. But because we have. For the first time, we are a generation of mothers who can see it clearly and we are done taking the bait.
No Country for Mothers, my investigative documentary into these very lies that distract and divide moms, broke a world record for the most producers of a film before its premiere on June 15. Thousands of mothers across the nation and across every political divide signed on and signed up to host screenings. I am not surprised. Every time I have gotten mothers in the same room, the manufactured division dissolves.
We are not each other’s enemy. We never were.
We are women who all want the same thing: to work, if we want; to raise children, if we want; and to do both, without drowning.
New Mexico figured it out. New York figured it out. The rest of the country can too, but only if we demand it.
Continue Exploring FEMINIST 250
This essay is part of FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, Ms. magazine’s sweeping series marking America’s 250th anniversary through a feminist lens. Much of the project is already live, including Founding Feminists, which reexamines the nation’s history through the women who shaped it; Feminist Lessons, which explores the defining victories, setbacks and organizing strategies of each decade since the 1970s; and the ongoing Democracy’s Feminist Future section, which looks ahead to the challenges and possibilities facing the next generation. We invite you to explore the full series and catch up on earlier essays, interviews and reported features examining how feminist movements have transformed the nation—and where the fight for a more inclusive democracy goes next.
