Parents and Caregivers Are Concerned About Costs, Split on Whom They Trust to Support Families
By Abby Springs and Brian Burton
As part of the Build Back Better framework, President Biden and Democrats pledged to support an expansive care agenda, including improving access to long-term care and child care, paid family and medical leave, and more. However, due to opposition from Republicans — and some Democrats — these policies were not passed as part of Biden’s first term, and both parties will likely aim to convince parents that their candidates will better represent families if they win power in November.
In a new survey, Data for Progress asked voters with children under the age of 18 about the challenges of raising a family today. When asked whether the federal government should be doing more or less to support families with children, 56% of all likely voters say the government should be doing more. Among voters with children, the number rises to 73%.
Voters who have children rank paying rent and other bills as the top challenge for families, followed closely by paying for food and groceries. Paying for medical care also ranks as a top choice, while inappropriate curriculums in K-12 schools is the least-chosen concern for voters with children.
Seventy-five percent of voters with children say that it is harder today than it was for previous generations to raise a family, and 58% say that future generations will have a worse quality of life than their generation.
Among voters with children, neither party has a significant trust advantage to better represent the interests of families with children, and the same relatively holds true for Biden and Donald Trump. However, it’s worth noting that a plurality of this sample of voters with children say the Democratic Party better represents their interests than the Republican Party, but they also narrowly choose Trump over Biden. Sixteen percent of parents say that neither party represents their interests, and 15% say the same about the two candidates for president.
However, voters with children strongly support policies that would benefit parents and caregivers — with increasing the availability of long-term care and providing free pre-K ranking as the most popular policies. Providing guaranteed paid leave, permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit, and extending postpartum Medicaid coverage also have strong support among this subgroup.
Our polling shows that Democrats do not have a significant trust advantage on supporting families. In 2024, Republicans will likely continue their strategy of portraying themselves as the “pro-family” party, with culture war attacks, book bans, and curriculum censorship. However, polling shows that an agenda that helps address concerns about high costs is extremely popular with parents, while issues like inappropriate curriculums do not rank as a high concern.
Abby Springs (@abby_springs) is the Press Secretary at Data for Progress.
Brian Burton (@Brian_C_Burton) is a lead analyst at Data for Progress.
Survey Methodology
From February 7 to 9, 2024, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,220 U.S. likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. Thesample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage