The Trump administration is drafting a Child Care and Development Fund rule that would, for the first time, let low-income married couples collect child-care aid when one parent stays home, according to The New York Times, which cited people familiar with the plan and a draft document it reviewed.
The C.C.D.F. was built to help poor and working-class parents work. Under current rules it only counts care outside the home.
Officials would add a new category, “parent-based child care,” about $9,000 per child a year, if one spouse works at least 35 hours a week and household income stays under the existing state cap, usually 85% of median income, sometimes closer to 60%.
If it goes forward as written, it would be the first federal subsidy that pays low-income married parents to raise their own kids at home. No federal program currently pays parents to care for their own children at home.
The May 11 White House release says the childcare package includes reforms that “increase access and affordability, expand provider choice, and better empower stay-at-home parents.” That May package was direction and guidance.
The draft, now in circulation, is the next step. It would turn that guidance into a concrete C.C.D.F. payment for low-income married couples who provide the care themselves.`
Conservatives backing the draft say raising a child at home is work, and that the same income-tested aid should reach low-income married parents who stay home with their child.
The cash would come from the Child Care and Development Fund, a roughly $12 billion Health and Human Services program built in the 1990s to help low-income and working-class parents pay for day care so they could work, go to school, or finish job training.
The income screen does not change. A stay-at-home parent would qualify only if the household already sits under the state’s C.C.D.F. cap. One spouse would still have to work at least 35 hours a week. The aid is framed as partial replacement for the paycheck the family gives up, not as a bonus on top of two full salaries.
Backers also stress parental choice. The same White House effort that first surfaced in The Daily Signal in May aimed to give low-income families more room to use vouchers and to keep a parent home part-time or full-time, instead of treating a licensed center as the only option the government will fund.
Vice President JD Vance is the main White House advocate. The draft also tracks earlier Senate child-care legislation from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Vance has argued for years that young children do better with a parent at home than in day care. In a 2021 Wall Street Journal opinion essay with Jenet Erickson, he wrote that “young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent.”
The same year he posted that “normal Americans” want a “family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.”
Roger Severino, a Heritage Foundation vice president, told The New York Times has said existing programs can end what he calls discrimination against stay-at-home parents without new statutes. “It would be a welcome change to see equal treatment between commercial daycare and the contribution stay-at-home parents provide in caring for and raising the next generation,” he said. Heritage officials told The Daily Signal the change would survive legal challenges, including for married same-sex couples who meet the income and work tests.
Because this would be a regulatory change, not a new law, it would not need a vote in Congress. It would still need White House approval and a public comment period before it could take effect, possibly next year. States would still run the program. Exact income cutoffs by state, how the money would be paid, and whether Congress would add new funding have not been locked in.
C.C.D.F. eligibility is generally limited to children under 13. States may extend help up to age 19 only if a child cannot care for himself or herself because of a physical or mental disability, or is under court supervision. The draft does not change that age structure.
The existing program already serves a narrow slice of poor and near-poor families. It covers about 870,000 households and roughly 1.3 million children. About 80% of those families are headed by a single working parent, most of them mothers. The fund reaches only about one in seven children who are technically eligible, and many states keep waiting lists because there is not enough money to go around.
Amy Matsui, vice president for child care and income security at the National Women’s Law Center, called the draft “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.”
She noted that C.C.D.F. already serves only one in seven eligible children and said 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.”
She argued the proposal would disrupt a fragile system and harm single mothers, families of color, low-income families, and providers.
That is the core fight. C.C.D.F. already reaches only about one in seven eligible children. Adding married couples who keep a parent home would put more families in line for the same money. The draft does not add new funding. The payment would go to a parent caring for her own child at home, not to a day-care slot.
This past weekend on Fox & Friends Weekend, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles praised the reported plan. The rule is still a draft. It has not been published, still needs White House sign-off, and would face a public comment period before it could take effect, possibly next year.
