04/21/2026
'Free' day care isn't what you think it is
Taxpayers are set to bear the brunt of "free" day care in New York.
Adobe Stock
Child care got expensive — more than $13,000 per child, per year.
So many people want government to pay for it.
My state just agreed. New York will fund free child care. Yay!
But wait … what government does isn’t free. Taxpayers pay.
And taxpayers pay more because “government rules have unintended consequences,” says Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Washington, DC, day-care teachers must have a degree in Early Childhood Education. That can take two years and cost $22,000.
“Of course you’re going to have to pay a lot more,” says Lukas, “when you’ve asked people to invest tens of thousands of dollars in degrees.”
Many government rules are just dumb.
Illinois says providers must offer coins for pay phones.
Providers must have “one crib with mattress, sheet, and blanket per infant” — but wait! Illinois also says, “Soft bedding . . . shall not be used.”
Which is it?!
Illinois bureaucrats told us their rules are “being updated.”
Red states have dumb rules, too.
Oklahoma’s regulations specify the exact number of items providers must have: two nesting, stacking and interlocking toys per one to two kids, two toddler pounding toys, two support pillows, three squeaky toys, two knobbed puzzles, three wrist or ankle bells . . .
Really. Oklahoma’s regulations go on for 180 pages!
“Policymakers talk about the lack of affordable care,” says Lukas, “yet here they are layering on regulations that make it impossible for people to come and fill that need. This pushes good people out of the industry.”
It also stops good people from providing in-home care.
“In-home day care is often what parents want most,” says Lucas. “Places that most replicate that comfortable, family-supportive environment.”
In-home care used to be the most common form of child care, but not anymore.
“Regulations make it really hard for someone who has their own kids, who’s already going to be staying at home, to invite other kids to that home,” says Lucas.
Michigan requires a license to take care of even one other child.
Getting that license can take six months and requires CPR training, infectious-disease training, child abuse training, a six-hour orientation, an environmental-health inspection . . .
“Those rules don’t help kids as much as raise costs,” says Lucas. “Fewer people enter the market, and parents are left with fewer options.”
Lukas is raising five kids, but she says the rules would discourage her from ever trying to offer home care.
“There are things that no family would ever comply with. I would have to go into my cabinets and find every cereal box and make sure it was in a sealed container . . . “
Delaware’s regulations say: “Food must be stored in closed or sealed containers . . . ”
Also, endless government rules don’t guarantee safety. Missouri’s Adventure Learning Center had a license. Teachers there were caught telling 3-year-olds to fight.
Real crooks ignore government rules altogether, as Minnesota’s day-care scandal showed. Incompetent government rarely checks.
“Here they were,” says Lukas, driving the law-abiding centers out of the day-care market, but in the meantime, “funneling millions of taxpayer dollars . . . letting money flow to those who weren’t providing any care at all.”
“There should be no regulations?” I ask.
“A background check for a day-care provider is a reasonable requirement, but other than that, I think we really should be trusting parents, not government, to make the decision on what makes sense for their child . . . . Parents, not government, care the most about kids.”
Activists and politicians always think more rules make things better.
More often than not, they make things worse.
John Stossel is the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”
