PVS: Biden's Families Plan Doesn't Care What Families Want

May 14, 2021

The government has a plan for your family. The Biden administration is calling it the "American Families Plan." What exactly is this plan? As FRC's Pray Vote Stand broadcast revealed, Biden's plan is a cornucopia of bad ideas, but its centerpiece is a thinly veiled attempt to indoctrinate America's children with progressive ideologies by providing free universal government-run daycare for toddlers, to the tune of $1.8 trillion (that's with a "t"). As Susan Rice, head of Biden's Domestic Policy Council, revealed to the New York Times, "We want parents to be in the workforce, especially mothers." So that's what the government wants. But is this what mothers want?

"The answer really is no, except for a small segment of childless upper-class women," said Joy Pullmann, executive editor at the Federalist and a mother herself. "What mothers and families overall really want is to be able to spend more time with their kids and to be able, especially in the younger years of children's lives, to focus more of their energies on them. The majority of women and mothers who are in the workforce really say that they wish they could work fewer hours than they are currently working ... All women don't want to stay home full time, but the majority of women -- some three quarters -- want to work part time or less when they are mothers, especially if they have small children."

Assuming that a one-size-fits-all government plan will work for everybody is a classic mistake that progressives make over and over again, as Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at FRC, made clear.

"As every mom could tell you, every child she bears is different," Szoch said. "Parents need to be the ones making the decisions about [their families], not the government. It's parents who know their child best, and it's parents who know what their child needs best. And we've seen when the government tries to institute a one-size-fits-all plan for children, it just doesn't work."

Perhaps the most fundamental question is this: Is government-run daycare what is best for a young child?

"In [Biden's] plan, children are treated as an obstacle to having more units of economic production to pushing women out from investing in the point of an economy [which is] strong families, because families are the bedrock unit of a healthy society," Pullmann said. "So if you don't have anyone there doing that daily mothering work of managing children's emotions, helping teach them social graces and personal skills and all of those things that mothers do moment by moment, all day long ... [all of this] really constitute the meaning in our jobs. If you don't have mothers present for the children doing that for them when they need it, which can't be stuffed into an hour or two between work, school, and bedtime -- much more than that is needed for little children."

Pullmann went on to observe that this model has been empirically proven to be the best for society time and time again. "We know from common sense and research that children really need that very tender personal attention that mothers and fathers provide to them, and that a home with that attention to them is the very best environment for them to be growing up, to be contributing members of society. So this plan really tries to destroy that fundamental building block that is the center and the point of a society in the first place."

When children are pulled out of their homes and dropped off at government-run daycare, what will they actually be taught? As Szoch noted, "We've seen this movie before, and it's called 'the public school system.' During COVID, parents got a front row seat to see what was being taught to their children and how they were being indoctrinated. We saw explicit sex education. We saw gender theory. We saw the pushing of critical race theory."

With all of this indoctrination, one has to wonder how much time is spent on actual education. Charmaine Yoest, vice president at the Heritage Foundation, joined the broadcast and underscored how progressives do not have a good track record when it comes to turning education dollars into tangible student achievement. "We've spent over $2 trillion [since 1964] on K through 12 education," she noted. "And you know what's happened to the achievement levels? If you look at all of the data, all of the different metrics, it looks like this: it's been completely flat. You would think with that kind of spending we would actually see some results for American kids."

Yoest went on to point out another alarming trend in public education. "There is one metric, though, that has skyrocketed ... It is the amount of spending being done for school administrators. So we're spending a lot of money and it's not getting to kids. And I'm here to tell you, that's exactly the same pattern we're going to see with this new spending that they want to do."

So what do parents need to be doing? "They need to be in touch with their school system," Yoest said. "We have been talking a lot about encouraging parents to get on their school board, get involved and really exercise your voice."

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) also joined the broadcast and reiterated the need for more believers to run for their school board and get involved with their local schools. "Now, more than ever, we need parents to stand up and to fight for what is right for their children's education," she said. "You never get a second chance to do that."

Be sure to watch the full Pray Vote Stand broadcast for more great analysis of the American Families Plan.