Many governors across the country, Democrats and Republicans
alike, are
making a point of mentioning childcare these days. In fact, nearly half of
them mentioned it in their 2026 State of the State addresses, according to a
tally released this week by the Center for American Progress. And it stands to
reason. Childcare is
less affordable than ever, even for middle-0class families, and voters
want the government to do something about it.

To that end, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger on
Wednesday signed
a bill creating an Employee Child Care Assistance program that would, through
matching government funds, incentivize companies to contribute to their
employees’ childcare costs. “Because when a family cannot afford child care,
oftentimes a parent—and the numbers bear it out, oftentimes a mom—drops out of
the workforce altogether. That doesn’t just create a family budget issue, that
creates a challenge for our economy,” Spanberger said.

It is true that women are disproportionately likely to
drop out of the workforce because they can’t afford to pay for care for
young children. But a survey released Wednesday from New America, a nonpartisan,
liberal think tank, paints a more complicated picture. Parents of young
children want to work, but they also want to be able to spend more time with
their children. Making childcare more affordable only addresses half of that equation.
What can policymakers do to give parents more time with their children?

The research,
from New America’s New Practice Lab, surveyed 5,472 parents with children under
6 years old and found that across income groups and around the country, 72
percent wanted more quality time with their kids—even more than they wanted
personal time (63 percent) or sleep (56 percent). The most common ways they wanted
to spend this time were “playing, enjoying outdoor activities, and traveling.”
Alas, more than half of them said they didn’t have enough money for the kind of
childcare arrangement that would allow for more time with their kids.

This was true for men as well as women, and the problem started
from the moment their child was born: Nearly everyone said that they didn’t get
to take the amount of parental leave they would have preferred, with 59 percent
taking six weeks or less and 15 percent taking no leave at all.

“At its simplest, parents need money, but they also need
time,” said Tara Dawson McGuinness, executive director of the New Practice Lab.
“It’s one thing to be able to afford putting food on the table, but we heard in
some of the open-ended questions, a real hunger…to be there with your children
at the dinner table, and that wages and work were competing with the ability
for people to see their kids.”

This is why Democrats around the country are pushing for
more paid family leave; Spanberger recently signed
such a bill in Virginia. While there’s no
federal guarantee of paid family leave, a recent analysis by the National
Partnership for Women & Families found
that the District of Columbia and 13 states have passed paid-leave laws,
providing coverage for nearly a third of private-sector workers across the
country; that number would rise to 44 percent if six more states follow through
with efforts to pass such a law. Having the right to leave doesn’t mean workers
will take it, though; states also need to ensure that workers can afford
to take the time and are not punished
for doing so.

But paid family leave typically covers only the time right
after birth, or when an adopted child joins a family. The New America survey
showed that parents wanted more time with their kids throughout their toddler
years as well. But when workers, especially women, take extended time out of
the workforce to be with young children, they face barriers returning to work
and take a hit in their lifetime
earnings.  As long as women are
discriminated against after having children, the prospect of taking more time
off to be with children is unlikely to appeal to men, out of fear that they
would be punished in the workplace, too.

Unsurprisingly, low-income parents faced the biggest hurdles
finding family time and affording activities, according to the New America
study. But parents with higher incomes also wanted more time with their children
and named financial concerns as a big reason they couldn’t have it. “What
struck us… was how many commonalities there were across income levels,” said
Kelly Bidwell, who also worked on the report.

While most of the parents they surveyed wanted to work,
there weren’t clear majorities when it came to how their work schedules should
look. Parents wanted flexibility, and the biggest barrier to that was money.
Two-thirds of parents, across all income groups, said they wanted higher wages,
both to be able to afford the activities they wanted to do with their kids and
to be able to work less.

The U.S. does need more affordable childcare. But providing
that doesn’t solve this fundamental problem: Parents want the resources to be
able to spend more time with their children while they’re young. No policymaker
can find more hours in a day, but one of the big reasons parents don’t take off
more time for their families is that they don’t earn enough to be able to do
so. “We are not having a national conversation about time and wages, which are
what parents are really asking for,” McGuinness said. “Our policies for
families aren’t wrong, but they are not exactly right either.”