The Trump administration is drafting rules to let married couples with a stay-at-home parent claim federal child care subsidies -- a pro-family priority championed by Vice President JD Vance.
The Trump administration is drawing up rules that would allow married couples with a stay-at-home parent to claim federal child care subsidies -- a pro-family priority championed by Vice President JD Vance. If finalized, it would mark the first federal program to pay parents for caring for their own children at home.
The proposal is being developed at the Department of Health and Human Services and could be introduced without a vote in Congress, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Under the draft rules, married couples within specified income limits could qualify when one parent works at least 35 hours a week and the other remains at home to care for the children. The subsidy would be designed to compensate, in part, for the income lost by the parent who left paid employment.
The money would come from the $12 billion Child Care and Development Fund, created during the Clinton administration to help low- and moderate-income parents pay for child care while they worked, studied or underwent job training. Families currently receive assistance mainly through vouchers or direct payments to providers, with the benefit typically worth about $9,000 per child each year.
Officials involved in the discussions said the changes could take effect as soon as next year. The draft must still be approved by the White House and published for public consultation, and the final version could be altered.
The plan is understood to be a White House priority and a particular focus for Vance, who has repeatedly argued that more mothers should be able to remain at home with young children. More than 80 percent of stay-at-home parents are mothers, according to the Pew Research Center.
Vance has also called for greater support for kinship care, in which children are looked after by relatives. In a 2021 opinion article, he argued that young children were better off spending the day at home with a parent rather than in child care.
The proposal echoes the Project 2025 blueprint, which said federal child care funding should be available to parents who stayed at home or relied on relatives for care. Roger Severino, a Heritage Foundation vice president who wrote the blueprint's child care section, said the policy would give stay-at-home parents equal recognition alongside commercial providers.
Critics argue that expanding eligibility without increasing the size of the fund would leave working parents competing for a smaller share of support. About 80 percent of the 870,000 families currently receiving subsidies are single-parent households, most of them headed by women.
Child care providers could also lose income if families chose to receive the money while caring for their children at home. Roughly 225,000 providers rely on subsidy payments, and experts warned that some could be forced to raise fees or close if funding were diverted.
Krystal Gastineau, who runs the Cribs 2 Crayons child care center in Aurora, Colorado, said about half of the children in her care were supported through the program. Lezlie Cranston, a single parent in Auburn, Washington, uses the subsidy for her two young children while she studies at Skagit Valley College and warned the change could make it harder for single parents to obtain help.
Some HHS lawyers have questioned whether restricting the proposed benefit to married couples would be lawful. Officials have also raised concerns about fraud, particularly because payments would be made to individuals rather than child care businesses.
Unmarried couples with one parent at home would not qualify under the current draft, and single parents who do not work would remain ineligible. Supporters of the plan say it expands family choice and gives parents credit for the work of raising their own children -- a shift long sought by conservative family advocates.
The draft rule still needs White House sign-off and a public comment period before it can take effect, meaning the details could shift in the coming months. If it clears those hurdles, eligible families could begin applying as early as next year.
For now, the proposal signals a major direction for the administration: treating the decision to stay home with children as work worth supporting, not just a lifestyle choice.
The Trump administration is drafting rules to let married couples with a stay-at-home parent claim federal child care subsidies -- a pro-family priority championed by Vice President JD Vance.
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