Childcare

Social Services Cuts Will Mean More Women Stop Working—and Maybe That’s the Point

PUBLISHED 1/9/2026 by

The current federal administration is very pro-family—they tell us that all the time. One of JD Vance’s first public appearances as vice president was his speech at the antiabortion March for Life rally in January 2025, where he called for more births in the U.S. and framed his agenda as both “pro-life” and “pro-family.” Trump reaffirmed that position in March, where he reiterated that this was a pro-family administration.

But at the start of this year, on Jan. 6, 2026, alleging concerns about fraud in state-run social services programs (even though the only concerns that have been raised—not proven—are in Minnesota), the Trump-Vance administration’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended three programs that provide support to children—not only in Minnesota, but also in California, Colorado, New York and Illinois. Those states, all led by Democrats, will lose access to billions in funding through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the Child Care and Development Fund, and the Social Services Block Grant program. To be clear, these funds are the backbone of services-provision for families living in poverty in most communities, Republicans and Democrats alike.

This announcement comes days after the administration moved to eliminate a rule that had capped childcare copayments for low‑income families at 7 percent of their income.

It also comes after last year’s efforts to eliminate support for Head Start, quality and affordable education and other services for young children living in poverty.

All this from the pro-family party.

RFK Jr. Wants to Scrutinize the Vaccine Schedule—But its Safety Record Is Already Decades Long

PUBLISHED 1/5/2026 by

The U.S. childhood immunization schedule, the grid of colored bars pediatricians share with parents, recommends a set of vaccines given from birth through adolescence to prevent a range of serious infections. The basic structure has been in place since 1995, when federal health officials and medical organizations first issued a unified national standard, though new vaccines have been added regularly as science advanced.

Vaccines on the childhood schedule have been tested in controlled trials involving millions of participants, and they are continuously monitored for safety after being rolled out. The schedule represents the accumulated knowledge of decades of research. It has made the diseases it targets so rare that many parents have never seen them.

But the schedule is now under scrutiny.

In Norfolk, Va., Parents and Community Members Took Children’s Education and Safety Into Their Own Hands

PUBLISHED 12/28/2025 by and

In Norfolk, Va., parents were worried about their children’s safety while getting off school buses, after noticing an uptick in gun violence that coincided with school dismissal times. In response, community members—organized by nonprofit advocacy group New Virginia Majority—launched the “Take Back the Bus Stop” campaign, petitioning for emergency call boxes and mobilizing neighbors to show up in force. In the Calvert Square and Young Terrace neighborhoods, organizers and residents were physically present at bus stops each afternoon—greeting students as they arrived home and helping to deter violence through collective care and visibility.

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)

Santa Is a Woman

PUBLISHED 12/22/2025 by

As Americans prep for the holidays and the time off from paid work that comes with them, I suspect many working moms are steeling ourselves for a season that feels anything but restful.  

The weight of society’s expectations of working moms on a normal day is crushing. As the mother of two young children, an attorney fighting for due process for immigrants in the second Trump administration and a clinical law professor, I know this firsthand.

Project 2026 Declares Open War on Women’s Rights

PUBLISHED 12/13/2025 by

When The Heritage Foundation released its new policy blueprint for 2026 this week—an extension of the now-infamous Project 2025—it did so with the calm confidence of an institution convinced no one will stop it. The document is shorter than last year’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership,” but no less dangerous. It is, in fact, more candid.

Project 2026 lays out a government redesigned to control women’s bodies, erase LGBTQ+ lives, dismantle civil rights protections and roll back decades of hard-won progress. Wrapped in the language of “family,” “sovereignty” and “restoring America,” it is a direct attempt to impose a narrow, rigid ideology on an entire nation.

Make no mistake: This is a plan for forced motherhood, government-policed gender and the end of women’s equality as we know it.

But Project 2026 is not destiny. It is a warning—and one we must answer with the full force of a movement that has never accepted a future written for us by someone else.

Keeping Score: 137 Women Are Killed by Partners or Family Per Day; Bipartisan Push for Epstein Files; Trans Day of Remembrance and Native Women’s Equal Pay Day

PUBLISHED 12/9/2025 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—137 women and girls are killed by intimate partners or family members every day.
—Congress votes overhwlemingly to force the Justice Department to release their Epstein files.
—Donald Trump snaps at women journalists: “Quiet, piggy” and “you are an obnoxious—a terrible, actually a terrible reporter.”
—Violence against trans women remains high.
—DACA recipients are being targeted and detained under the Trump administration.
—Higher-income college students often receive more financial support than they need, while low-income students struggle.
—Tierra Walker died from preeclampsia in Texas after being repeatedly denied an abortion.
—Viola Ford Fletcher died at age 111. She was the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. 
—North Dakota’s total abortion ban was reinstated after the state’s Supreme Court reversed a temporary injunction from a lower court. There are now 13 states with total bans.

… and more.

Caregiving Is Extremely Difficult in America. It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way.

PUBLISHED 11/25/2025 by

For many Asian and immigrant families, caregiving is a way of life, with generations living and caring for one another under the same roof as part of daily life. My Iranian grandparents lived in a multi-unit dwelling in Tehran, where they cared for each other through illness and aging, cooking and sharing meals with their children and grandchildren in what seemed to me a seamless synchronicity. When my Pakistani grandmother emigrated from Karachi to the U.K. in the 1970s, she moved in with my uncle’s family, sharing a bedroom with her youngest grandson until she died. Now, that grandson lives in the same house with his own children and aging parents. 

However, here in the U.S., caregiving takes on a very different form, even for families raised on the belief that caring for another is simply what we do.

Playing Games With Hunger

PUBLISHED 11/11/2025 by

Gail Todd lives with her husband and three daughters in the southeastern section of Washington, D.C., and works at a Walmart in suburban Maryland. Her husband is a shift manager at a fast-food restaurant. Food stamps—the common name for the vouchers or debit cards supplied by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—helped Todd when she struggled financially after her first daughter was born. She had to turn to them again four years ago because her job, combined with her husband’s wages, doesn’t pay enough to feed her family.

Before Walmart, Todd, pregnant now with her fourth child, worked for $8.35 an hour at McDonald’s. Walmart’s $10 hourly wage was better. In the beginning she worked roughly 40 hours a week, but since May her weekly hours have been reduced to between 16 and 28, earning her no more than $900 a month. The loss in income coincided with a cut to the family’s monthly food-stamps benefit from $339 down to $239—the lowest she’s ever received—because a temporary boost to the program in the stimulus bill was allowed to expire Nov. 1, 2013.

“The food stamps, they help, but it’s not enough because I can’t feed my family,” she says.

[From the Spring 2014 issue of Ms.]

Election Results: Historic Gender Gaps Shape 2025 Outcomes in Virginia, New Jersey and Beyond

PUBLISHED 11/3/2025 by , , , and | UPDATED 11/10/2025 at 12:28 P.M. PT

We’ve curated the results of all the state-by-state election results that feminists most care about.

Together, the early data from this week’s elections paints a clear picture: Women voters were the decisive force in the 2025 elections, driving sweeping Democratic victories across key states. Women turned out at higher rates than men and made up a majority of voters. Support for women’s rights, reproductive freedom, gender equality and fair immigration policies powered a Democratic sweep this election season.

Historic gender gaps reshaped the political landscape:
—In Virginia, 65 percent of women voted for Democrat Abigail Spanberger for governor, compared to just 48 percent of men, a 17-point gender gap. 
—In New Jersey, women backed Democrat Mikie Sherrill by 62 percent, compared with 49 percent of men, a 13-point gap that proved decisive in her win.