Raising a Nation: 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Child Care for All

Raising a Nation offers a new framework for thinking about a comprehensive, inclusive child care system: one that supports families in all their diversity, whether they want to utilize a licensed child care program, family member, or have a parent as the primary child care provider.

Thanks to a history of neglect, child care in America is expensive, scarce, and of questionable quality. Yet too often the response is not a push for governmental action but a derisive, ＂Why should I pay for your child?＂ At best, leaders make the case for child care on bloodless economic grounds: We need a place to put the kids so parents can work. Elliot Haspel argues that a key step has been missed. A step so fundamental that it has ruined the chances of winning an effective child care system, despite decades of pain that cross geographic and ideological borders. Establishing that good child care belongs among the pantheon of American values.

Haspel makes ten distinct but interlinking cases for why every American--whatever their political affiliation, and whether or not they have young children or any children at all--has a stake in ensuring a strong child care system to facilitate strong families and a strong nation. This groundbreaking book opens up conversations that can finally push child care from being seen as a private responsibility to being viewed as an essential part of the American social fabric.

Elliot Haspel is a nationally recognized child care policy expert, and a senior fellow at the think tank Capita. His work has been published by major media outlets, and he is regularly called upon by top print, radio, and TV journalists to comment on child care issues. The author of Crawling Behind: Americas Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It, in 2021 Elliot testified before the U.S. House of Representatives about child care. He holds a B.A. in History from the University of Virginia, an M.Ed. in Education Policy & Management from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Early Childhood Policy from the University of Colorado-Denver.