President Biden recently announced his "American Families Plan," which proposes to "invest" $255 billion in childcare subsidies. The president said his plan will "allow roughly one million parents, primarily mothers, to enter the labor force." He promised this will save the average family $14,800 per year on childcare expenses by providing a range of affordable options for early childhood care and education -- all of which will include "developmentally appropriate curriculum, small class sizes, and culturally and linguistically responsive environments." Biden explained that this plan is necessary to avoid the "lifetime consequences" that are the result of parents' work/life balance changing to prioritize caring for their child at home.
What President Biden failed to mention, however, is what this plan will cost American families -- especially those with a religious worldview. Though the average American's wallet is certain to feel the impact of this plan's price tag, the greatest loss will not be measured in dollars and cents, but by the number of parents who will be incentivized to give up their role as primary educator of their child.
Aristotle said, "Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man." As George Barna mentioned on "Washington Watch," socialist, totalitarian regimes around the world have embraced philosophy because they recognize how effective it is. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party has most recently employed this technique on Uyghur children living in Xinjiang. These children are separated from their parents, indoctrinated, and forced to go against their Muslim beliefs by doing things like eating pork. At times, even the kindergarteners are interrogated. One interviewee stated, "My daughter had a classmate who said, 'My mom teaches me Quran.' The next day, they are gone."
Certainly, this is an extreme example -- and this type of overt indoctrination is unlikely to happen in America in the immediate future -- but Americans cannot be naive. Whether it's through explicit sex-education in California that pushes an LGBTQ agenda beginning in kindergarten, the silencing of teachers who share biblical stories, or the promotion of critical race theory, the public school system has shown that the Left has no problem with indoctrination.
As Barna pointed out, "Thanks to COVID, more and more parents are becoming aware of what their children are actually taught, how they're being taught, who's teaching them, what kind of documents they're being forced to read. And so what we've seen is that the portion of children being homeschooled has risen from three percent to eleven percent in the last 18 months." As Barna stated, "maybe all parents can't do the homeschool route...they still have that primary responsibility to know what's going on in their child's education."
In the same way, having one parent stay at home full-time may not work for every family, but parents still have the primary responsibility to know what's going on in their child's most formative years. When parents, not the government, decide what is best for their children, Christian parents can ensure they are fulfilling, what George Barna pointed out is their primary responsibility, "raising children to be spiritual champions, young people who grow up to love the Lord and serve Him with all their heart, mind, strength and soul."
Though raising children who love and serve the Lord is the goal of parents with a biblical worldview, it certainly is not the goal of an administration who supports destroying life in the womb, denies that God made human beings male and female, and rejects the biblical teaching on marriage. So, while getting $14,800 per year from the government may sound enticing, for Christians, the lifetime consequences of the "American Families Plan" come at far too great of cost.
