JD Vance’s childcare plan ticked off some parents and grandparents. There’s a way to fix it.

Some countries pay family, friends, and neighbors who provide childcare services.

Linda C., a retired deputy sheriff in California, considers herself politically independent.

She voted for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and then for President Joe Biden in 2020. But this year, she feels strongly about supporting the Democratic ticket, largely because of the stances Republicans, including Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, have taken on childcare.

She was particularly perturbed by Vance’s recent suggestion that grandparents and other family members “help out a little bit more” with childrearing to relieve the burden of childcare costs.

Linda said she loves spending time with her grandchildren but worked hard for her retirement and thinks Vance’s proposal is an unsustainable and “insulting” solution to the childcare crisis.

“I have a very intense, visceral response to it, almost like a PTSD response to it, because I was brought up in the ’70s around what we used to call ‘male chauvinist pigs,'” said Linda, who requested her last name be withheld to protect her privacy. “I thought I’d never use that phrase again, but that’s the way I’m feeling about Vance and Trump and the way that they’re making women feel less than.”

Linda’s daughter used to work as a dental assistant but quit when she had a kid because childcare was too expensive. “She wants to work,” Linda said. “She wants to have a better lifestyle for her family to achieve the American dream. But she’s unable to because it just doesn’t pencil out.”

Vance and many other conservative lawmakers have opposed government subsidies for childcare providers in part because they say the policy prioritizes working parents, rather than those who stay home with their kids. After Vance’s recent remarks on childcare drew widespread criticism, he clarified his stance in a post on X, saying that “parents or grandparents might not be able to help, but they might want to, and for those families, federal policy should not be forcing one particular family model.”

After reporting on Vance’s remarks, B-17 received a wave of reader emails expressing frustration that Vance was missing the point. Many said he failed to acknowledge the real reason many grandparents don’t help with childcare more: They can’t afford to.

While Vance’s comments struck a nerve with some caregivers and weren’t a fleshed-out policy idea, it’s possible he’s onto the beginnings of a solution that’s helped in other countries, one expert told B-17. Many American families are stuck between a retirement crisis and a childcare crisis, with young parents unable to help their own parents — and vice versa. As the economy takes center stage in the upcoming election, parents are watching both candidates closely.

In a statement responding to the criticism, a spokeswoman for Vance, Taylor Van Kirk, told B-17 that the vice presidential candidate believes the federal government should compensate family members and other kin for providing childcare. She also pointed to recent comments Vance made arguing that childcare subsidies shouldn’t “favor one family model over another.”

“Senator Vance, who was raised largely by his own grandmother, knows firsthand the great sacrifice many grandparents, aunts and uncles and other relatives make when they care for a child who isn’t their own,” Van Kirk said. “Senator Vance believes in addressing kinship care with federally supported initiatives so that these families are relieved of an enormous, oftentimes unseen, financial burden and have the necessary resources to care for these kids.”

The childcare crisis meets the retirement crisis

Sandra, 51, has been dealing with both childcare and eldercare challenges over the past year.

Sandra, who requested her last name be withheld to protect her family’s privacy, has been taking care of her mother-in-law, who recently suffered an injury, while also helping to financially support her stepdaughter. She doesn’t see herself having the time or the financial means to contribute to her children’s potential childcare needs in the future.

“Our goal is to one day retire. Our goal is to one day be able to put ourselves in a nursing home if we need that, and to not be the financial and also health caregiver burden on my stepdaughter,” Sandra told B-17. “And when she has children, would we love to be that grandma and grandpa that helped out? Absolutely. Do we know that we could physically or mentally do it? We’re not sure.”

The looming retirement crisis is weighing on many older Americans. The Census Bureau’s Population Survey found that more than half of respondents over 65 earned under $30,000 in 2022. At the same time, an AARP survey found that around one-fifth of adults aged 50 and older have no retirement savings.

Sandra said that “retirement feels completely out of reach for her.” While she earns income as a freelance writer, she and her husband are putting a significant amount of financial resources toward helping the older members of their family and said that in her situation, “there is no ‘get grandma to help.'”

“It seems like a very American problem that could be solved, but when you say things like, ‘just have grandma help out more,’ that’s a privilege that I think a lot of people don’t have at all,” she said.

Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan family policy think tank Capita, told B-17 that there is a way to solve the problem — and Vance actually might be on the right track. While he acknowledged that Vance’s comments lacked many important details, Haspel said that the idea of implementing more pathways to support family, friends, or neighbor caregivers — or FFNs — is a key way to address the childcare problem in the US.

“If better support of grandparents and other FFN caregivers was part of a comprehensive approach to childcare, then it can be really effective at making sure that American families have access to the options for care that they need and that are going to help their children develop healthily, and with the early learning that they’re going to need to succeed later,” Haspel said.

He added that there’s an opportunity here for Vice President Kamala Harris to expand on her childcare proposals in her platform — she has expressed support for national paid family leave and bolstered investments in childcare, but it did not address FFNs.

That could play out in a number of ways; for example, Haspel said, Sweden extended paid leave to grandparents wanting to take care of their grandchildren. Similarly, the US could require a comprehensive federal package to ensure sufficient funding, along with more robust investment in educational programs for child development — an idea Vance mentioned in his comments.

“It’s going to be good for communities. It’s going to be good for neighborhoods. It’s going to be good for the economy. It’s going to be good for social infrastructure and social connection,” Haspel said. “So you can go down the line and there’s a lot of reasons to want a comprehensive, pluralistic approach to childcare.”

Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow and Rowe Scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said that one underlying issue is that many mothers of younger children would prefer to work part-time — but the labor market isn’t well structured to accommodate that type of work, especially for women who still want to develop their careers and career paths.

“It’s a broader issue and something that both the private sector and employees can work out just trying to make the work schedules and the nature of work fit better with family life,” Rachidi said. “And that would help parents who want to stay home and care for kids; it would also help grandparents who want to help care for kids while their parents are working.”

Rachidi also said that revisiting the usefulness of regulations around informal care — settings like friend and family care — should be on the table, too. Right now, she said, those burdensome regulations can drive up costs, and prevent providers from entering the market to begin with.

Rachidi also said that revisiting regulations around small, in-home childcare centers should be considered. Right now, she said, burdensome regulations can drive up costs and prevent small providers from starting up.

Connie Adler, 76, is a retired physician and chair of the board of directors of Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights. She said that the assumption that grandparents are in a financial position to take time off to care for grandchildren is “crazy.”

“So many grandmothers are working — and working because they need to work to pay the rent and need to work to try and save some money for retirement,” Adler said.

She added that the “safety net in this country is the unpaid work of women.” The unaffordability of childcare is a structural problem, she said, and it requires a structural solution.

“If all the grandmothers in the country stopped working for a year, what will we do for doctors and nurses and teachers and scientists and engineers and bank tellers and everything else?” Adler said.