Sometimes good things are possible

About the new childcare proposals in New York

It feels wild to talk about literally anything right now that isn’t the horror of an ICE agent brutally murdering poet/mom/activist Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. (You can support the family’s GoFundMe here.)

Or maybe it’s wild to talk about anything except the the way Trump kidnapped a dictator, brought him to a prison in Brooklyn, and is trying to conquer Venezuela.

(Or perhaps we should talk about how he’s considering sending troops to steal Greenland?)

I don’t know. I don’t have anything profound to say about any of that except that there is always something we can do, even if we can’t do everything.

Given all that, I was noodling about what to write this week. I’ve got a solid essay cooking about how the Taylor Swift docuseries showed her to be a good millennial boss like the kind I wrote about in my book — but then yesterday something happened that reminded me why I do what I do:

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul came together and announced a plan to exponentially expand universal childcare across New York.

For those of you who are not New Yorkers or don’t have kids in NYC so aren’t in the weeds on this, unsurprisingly: childcare in the city is (like everywhere else) exceptionally expensive.

For full time (8am-6pm) care for my first daughter born in 2022, we paid $2280 a month. The rates have gone up to $2600 a month for my second kids. Those are slightly more expensive than the NYC average, but are some of the cheapest rates in my particular neighborhood in Brooklyn.

(I feel it’s important to be on the level here: I am lucky and grateful that we can mostly afford this — and, to be honest, it’s almost entirely because of my book deal for When We’re in Charge. I took on what amounted to a second job for us to pay for daycare for two kids.)

However! Thanks to Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYC has universal pre-K for the year your kid turns 4 and is working toward universal 3K for the year your kid turns 3.

I won’t get too detailed on how it works here (you can read all about it on the NYC Schools website if you care) but the end result is: In 2025, my big girl turned 3, so we entered the lottery and got a spot in a 3K program at a local public school.

From 8:10am-2:30pm she goes to a free program that includes free breakfast and lunch. We pay for aftercare and deal with coverage for all the various school holidays. (We’re currently deep in the weeds of summer camp research, which is its own headache, and one I hope the city council or state legislature will tackle at some point.)

No bullshit: The absolute only reason we could afford a second kid when we had one is because of the prospect of free 3K. The finances around this directly affected our family planning. And not that I ever want to, but when I start to do the math about the cost of leaving the city, it is wild that in most places, we’d have to pay for 3 or possibly 4 years more of private childcare until the kids could start kindergarten.

Hochul and Mamdani are going to strengthen and fix the 3K program, which means I can probably let go of my anxiety about the baby possibly not getting a spot in fall 2027.

Beyond that, over the next four years, they are going to roll out universal 2 Care — free childcare for wee little two year olds.

(Plus, Hochul’s going to expand pre K across New York state, which, great!)

I’m only lightly embarrassed to say: I was genuinely moved reading about the initial details of this policy proposal.

For one, childcare is a deeply personal issue for me (obviously: see above!). But it’s also the kind of thing that The Smart Democratic Men rarely bring up when they’re talking about “kitchen table issues,” or “the economy”even as it’s literally the most kitchen-table-y issue of them all that directly affects people’s finances.

The cost of childcare is so exorbitant it keeps people from having kids or expanding their families in the way they might want to — and for those who do have kids, childcare expenses often end up being the reason women leave the workforce. (Don’t get me started on this.)

All this is a choice much of our leadership has made: They have decided that it’s not worth finding the money to create systems that would give people agency over their families and their livelihoods.

I read all the articles and watched videos of the policy announcement yesterday and thought about all the parents (or wannabe parents) who for the first time considered: Huh, maybe I can think about having that baby. Maybe this will be possible.

I also was thrilled to see that actually it super matters if your governor and mayor get along! One of the many many things that drove me nuts about Andrew Cuomo was that he was bad at politics. If you can’t make nice with your colleagues and work in coalition to accomplish things, you are not good at your job! And while he certainly didn’t earnestly care about childcare costs anyway, if he had, he was absolutely never going to be able to put his ego aside and work with Hochul or anyone else to get it done.

More broadly, I needed that jolt of good news to remember: Good, brave, earnest local leadership can change lives.

Politicians are capable of making promises and then take concrete steps towards keeping them.

And despite what the GOP in Congress might be doing, political incentives still matter! There is no way Kathy Hochul would put so much into this without the momentum of the Mamdani campaign of 2025 and her own re-election prospects this year.

“Elections have consequences” is often in reference to the bad stuff, but sometimes good things happen, too.

Like this, LOL

Yesterday was just the announcement of the plan — it still needs to pass through the legislature as part of the state’s budget, and then execution will be extremely hard. The devil is in the details, as they say. But I am hopeful!

Change is possible if you’re willing to fight for it. How cool is that.

(Also, shout out to the good team at New Yorkers United for Child Care, who paved the way for this!)

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A few book recs:

• Beg, Borrow, or Steal and In Your Dreams, both by Sarah Adams - the final two books in the Rome, Kentucky romance series about four siblings finding love in a small town. Hot, enjoyable, and very cozy.

• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans - This is as good as everyone says it is!! Written entirely in letters from Sybil Van Antwerp to her family, friends, and enemies over the years as she reaches the end of her life. So sweet and prickly.

• Lighbreakers by Aja Gabel - A deeply sad novel about a man whose marriage falls apart after their 3 year old dies; later he gets remarried and has a chance to travel back in time to re-see his kid. I had a tough time reading this but also it made me really treasure my girls (particularly meaningful during the weekend we were potty training.)

• Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino - I loved this thriller about Margo Miyake, who will do literally anything to get the house of her dreams. She’s completely unhinged and it’s riveting. I finished this in basically two sittings.

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“The non-fiction book I’ve returned to most this year. A millennial writing about millennial leadership? A book about leadership that acknowledged that most leadership books are bullshit, based on the aphorisms of white men from a bygone era? I could quote this whole damn book.” - what one reader said about When We’re in Charge

You can pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.

Another option: Get your book along with an excellent I DO NOT DREAM OF LABOR tote bag at the Crooked Media shop.