NWLC on Trump-Vance Pronatalist Proposal to Direct Child Care Funds to Stay-At-Home Parents
Published onSeptember 5, 2026
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NWLC on Trump-Vance Pronatalist Proposal to Direct Child Care Funds to Stay-At-Home Parents
Washington, DC – The New York Times reported that the Trump-Vance administration plans to overhaul the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) by redirecting federal child care dollars away from families who need child care in order to work or go to school to married couples with a stay-at-home parent. This reported draft policy is the latest in the Trump administration’s attempts to implement a pronatalist, patriarchal agenda that seeks to push women out of public life and punish single mothers in the name of prioritizing “traditional families.”
“This is the administration’s latest effort to force an outdated vision of the family on all Americans, including by making it harder for women to stay in the workforce,” said Amy Matsui, vice president for child care and income security at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). “CCDF is already chronically underfunded, serving only one in seven eligible children. It is outrageous that the administration would propose siphoning money away from families who are struggling to afford child care to send cash to married couples with a stay-at-home parent, when hundreds of thousands of families are on child care waiting lists around the country. This radical proposal would disrupt an already fragile child care system – directly harming single mothers, families of color, and families with low incomes, as well as child care providers and early educators, at a time when work reporting requirements are already decimating access to basic need programs.
“All families want to care for their children in the ways that work best for them. This attempt to take support away from families who depart from J.D. Vance’s idea of what a family should look like is a cynical attempt to pit us against each other. If this administration really wanted to support families, it would invest more – not less – dollars in child care, create a national paid family and medical leave program, expand access to a fully refundable Child Tax Credit, and restore health care and nutrition assistance. The fact that this proposal came to light ahead of Labor Day is ironic, as it makes clear how little the administration respects working women.”
NWLC is leading efforts to push back against the administration’s attacks on the child care system and expose how these attacks are part of its pronatalist, anti-woman agenda. The National Women’s Law Center has also released a timeline detailing the ways the Trump administration is attacking the child care system through illegal funding freezes and other administrative actions
