Chasten Buttigieg slams JD Vance’s terrible idea for lowering childcare costs in just 10 words

Republican vice presidential candidate and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) recently suggested that American families struggling with childcare costs should simply ask grandparents, aunts, and uncles to help raise their kids. In response, Chasten Buttigieg, a gay dad himself and the husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, shut down Vance’s suggestion using just ten words.

Vance made his comments during his recent talk with far-right Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk at the Generation Church in Mesa, Arizona. During their conversation, Kirk asked Vance, “What can we do about lowering the cost of daycare?… It’s very hard for working families to get by.”

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Vance nodded and said, “One of the ways you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is to make it so that, maybe grandma and grandpa want to help out a little bit more. Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more.”

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Vance then said that for those who don’t have “somebody who can provide that extra set of hands,” the U.S. should encourage people who’d like to take care of children to “get trained in the skills that they need for the 21st century.”

“We’ve got a lot of people who love kids who would love to take care of kids, but they can’t either because they don’t have access to the education that they need or, maybe more importantly, because the state government says ‘You’re not allowed to take care of children unless you have some ridiculous certification that has nothing to do with taking care of kids,'” he said.

Vance didn’t explain how he would expand educational options for people interested in careers in childcare, nor did he specify what certifications he considers “ridiculous” for childcare workers, though he did say, “Don’t force every early childcare specialist to go and get a six-year college degree where they’ve got a whole lot of debt.”

Criticizing Vance’s response, Chasten Buttigieg wrote a pithy response on X, “‘Ask grandma to watch them for free’ is not policy.”

“Ask grandma to watch them for free” is not policy. https://t.co/fVrBqHbQdZ

— Chasten Glezman Buttigieg (@Chasten) September 5, 2024

The national average cost of childcare in 2023 was around $11,582, according to Child Care Aware of America.

While the necessary certifications for childcare workers differ between states, the most commonly required ones educate workers about the legal issues involved in childcare centers, the basics of child education and care, as well as certifications in CPR and first aid. Workers can also get additional certifications for child, mental health, special needs, and behavioral issues.

Many of the certifications can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars — including educational fees — as well as additional hours of applied and supervised practice. While this might seem unnecessarily burdensome, the certifications help ensure that childcare workers can handle a child’s many physical, intellectual, and emotional needs.

The Biden-Harris administration issued a more detailed plan for dealing with the high costs of childcare earlier this year, which included limiting co-payments for people receiving government assistance for childcare and making subsidies more accessible.

Vance’s comments are just the latest of many that show how out of touch he is with modern families and their needs. Vance has previously said that adoptive parents and stepparents are actually “childless cat ladies” who are determined the country “miserable.” He has said that people without children have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” and that “postmenopausal females” (that is, women above the age of 50) exist mostly to help raise other people’s children.

Chasten Buttigieg is raising three-year-old twins with his husband and recently wrote a children’s picture book called Daddy’s Coming Home.

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