New York\u2019s youthful mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is buoying the hopes of families and educators, boldly seeking<\/a> to create universally available child care starting when infants turn 6 weeks old.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Sworn in by fellow socialist Bernie Sanders, the Big Apple\u2019s new mayor will begin with no-cost (hopefully quality) care for all 2-year-olds, averaging roughly $22,000 in economic relief for young parents \u2014 the price<\/a> of infant-toddler care. No American city or state has attempted to enrich the earliest learning of toddlers on such a grand scale for free.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s proposal vividly departs from the Trump administration\u2019s fumbles on affordability. Middle-class families can net a whopping $2 a day<\/a> when filing tax returns this spring under Trump\u2019s budget reform. Vice President JD Vance, dodging the affordability question, simply implores women to produce<\/a> more babies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now Mamdani enters the affordability debate, hoping to layer his \u201c2-Care\u201d effort<\/a> atop the city\u2019s earlier spread of free preschool. It\u2019s a logical next step, providing more economic relief to families while recognizing the fact that infants begin to gesture, vocalize and practice language early on. By 2 years of age, stark disparities in children\u2019s mental and social skills have already surfaced<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter<\/a> tracks the issues.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Mamdani aims to lift the early learning of toddlers by building centers and handing out vouchers, initially focusing on \u201chigh-need\u201d neighborhoods<\/a>. But his plan borders on merely tinkering with the current archipelago of caregivers and pre-Ks, which vary wildly in quality and tend to segregate<\/a> children along racial lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n My team\u2019s research, for example, details<\/a> how stronger teachers and learning activities are more prevalent in pre-Ks that mostly teach white or Asian-heritage children. Mamdani\u2019s efforts could well reinforce stark disparities in children\u2019s early growth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n However, his virtuous aims can be met \u2014 if he learns from what works to lift toddlers, and if he considers where good intentions have gone terribly awry, at times, in Canada and Europe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, Quebec\u2019s child care entitlement<\/a> for all children, ages 0 to 4, is held in high regard by many progressives. But scratch beneath the surface and one discovers a cautionary tale.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois created an ambitious plan in 1997 to serve all children under age 5 for just $5 per day. The count of subsidized child care spaces nearly tripled<\/a> \u2014 but with uneven caregiver training and attention to learning activities. In short, quality was sacrificed in the rush to enroll more children. Scholars<\/a> observing a large sample of Quebec\u2019s home-based providers, many serving toddlers, rated 71 percent below \u201cgood\u201d quality.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, the program initially seemed to work in widening children\u2019s access, allowing tens of thousands of mothers<\/a>, then grandmothers<\/a>, to enter the workforce. And, tracking children over the first 15 years of Quebec\u2019s entitlement, researchers<\/a> did uncover positive benefits on early learning for children raised in low-income and single-parent homes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet, kids from middle-class and affluent families suffered slower development than similar peers staying at home, delays that persisted into elementary<\/a> school, then faded to null effects, according to a study<\/a> released last year. These unsettling findings are attributed not only to centers\u2019 overall low quality, but also to diminished learning activities in wealthier homes<\/a>, as parents spent more hours at work.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the U.S., the impacts of toddler care programs appear to be more positive. One early yet large-scale study<\/a> found that the nearly one-half of all children who attended some form of nonparental care by age 2, enjoyed stronger cognitive skills than peers who remained at home \u2014 if the nonparental care kids were tended by a responsive caregiver who arranged rich learning activities.\u00a0<\/p>\n But jumping to universal entitlements favors rapid expansion over quality, which can only undercut learning gains. In New Mexico, for example, the count of tepidly rated (\u201ctwo star\u201d) providers has more than doubled<\/a> since 2018, as state leaders accelerated expansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n New York\u2019s new child care chief, Emmy Liss<\/a>, labored hard to lift classroom quality when running Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2019s pre-K expansion that began in 2014. But she and other city leaders \u2014 along with governors in California and New Mexico \u2014 have been failing to rigorously study whether their costly entitlements actually boost the early learning of toddlers and preschoolers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Progressives hold faith that free child care will buoy all children while narrowing disparities in early learning. In Norway, where three-fourths of all toddlers now attend centers, learning gaps between kids from poorly educated and better-educated families have narrowed<\/a> by between 10 and 25 percent relative to toddlers at home.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But achieving such results requires that toddler care \u2014 whether in home-like settings or centers \u2014 packs a bigger punch for poor children than for their better-off peers. This is unlikely in New York\u2019s case, unless Mamdani seriously addresses uneven quality and segregated care settings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Fully half of New York\u2019s children under age 5 \u2014 including those enrolling<\/a> in the decade-old 4-K and 3-K initiatives, along with older EarlyLearn<\/a> and Head Start<\/a> centers, and receiving child care vouchers \u2014 already benefit from a publicly financed child care slot amidst the city\u2019s vast panoply of providers.\u00a0<\/p>\n When de Blasio sharply expanded free pre-K, new funding mainly flowed to families that had not qualified for targeted child care. It was the same regressive mistake made<\/a> by Gov. Gavin Newsom in California.\u00a0<\/p>\n Related: One state made preschool free. Then dozens of child care centers closed in its largest city<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Mamdani prefers a universal entitlement instead of conserving public dollars by attempting to first lift less-advantaged children. He insists<\/a> that it is \u201cthe city government\u2019s job to make sure each New Yorker has a dignified life, not determine which New Yorkers are worthy of that dignity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Stirring rhetoric. But school-finance progressives, including Mamdani\u2019s newly appointed city schools chancellor<\/a>, typically advocate for providing supplemental aid to elevate disadvantaged students \u2014 not evenly lathering funding between poor and affluent students.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why not simplify and unify the fragmented programs to create a single, center-based effort for kids under age 5 along with a single voucher program? Then, build a user-friendly website \u2014 think, a Lyft app for child care \u2014 that tracks vacancies, hours of operation and key quality indicators?\u00a0<\/p>\n At the same time, why nudge newborns into formal child care? Many parents may prefer longer periods of paid family leave, rather than whisking 6-week-olds into child care. Local and state voucher dollars could go directly to families during an infant\u2019s initial year of life, giving parents the option of ample paid leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n New York\u2019s pitch renews this essential debate over how we want to raise our youngest children, aided by what kinds of caregivers and pre-Ks. But if progressives (even socialists) repeat the Trumpian mistake \u2014 in which faithful ideology clouds knowledge of what\u2019s worked elsewhere \u2014 their good intentions will disappoint.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bruce Fuller, a sociologist at Berkeley, is author<\/a> of \u201cDebating Childhood and Preschool.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This story about child care for 2-year-olds<\/a> was produced by The Hechinger Report<\/a>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger\u2019s weekly newsletter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/hechingerreport.org\/opinion-early-childhood-education-new-york-city-mayor-zohran-mamdani\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hechingerreport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/hechingerreport.org\/?republication-pixel=true&post=114473&ga4=G-03KPHXDF3H” style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/hechingerreport.org\/opinion-early-childhood-education-new-york-city-mayor-zohran-mamdani\/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/hechingerreport.org\/p.js”><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Bruce Fuller, The Hechinger Report January 26, 2026 New York\u2019s youthful mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is buoying the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5287,50337,208,9,24,55,54,56,14509,5181],"class_list":{"0":"post-112863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-child-care","9":"tag-law-and-policy","10":"tag-literacy","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-city-news","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-race","17":"tag-teachers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}