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.