But New Mexico Must Ask Whether It Puts Children First
By Jodi Hendricks
New Mexico families are under real pressure. Childcare is expensive. Housing costs are rising. Many parents feel stuck between staying home and staying employed. Against that backdrop, the promise of “free” universal childcare understandably sounds compassionate, even necessary, especially for working-class families trying to make ends meet.
But compassion without caution can do real harm.
As lawmakers continue in a 30-day budget session, there is growing discussion about expanding or further entrenching the state’s universal childcare program. Before doing so, legislators should pause and ask a difficult but essential question: Does universal childcare actually serve the best interests of children?
The answer, according to some of the strongest evidence available, is not as reassuring as advocates suggest, and in some cases, it is deeply concerning.
A recent analysis in The Economist offers a blunt warning: “The best evidence on the impact of free (or almost free) universal from-birth childcare indicates that it can harm children.” That conclusion is not ideological. It is grounded in decades of research comparing small, high-quality early education programs with large-scale universal systems.
Programs often cited as success stories, such as the Perry Preschool Project, were targeted, intensive, and limited in scale. Disadvantaged three-year-olds received a few hours a day of high-quality instruction and regular home visits. Nobel Prize–winning economist James Heckman later found the program generated an estimated 7–10% annual return to society through higher graduation rates and lower crime.
Universal childcare, however, is something very different.
The Economist points to Quebec’s experience as the clearest real-world test of a low-cost, universal system. When the province rolled out a $5-a-day childcare program in the late 1990s, participation surged and maternal employment increased. But the impact on children raised serious concerns.
Researchers found increases in aggression, anxiety, and hyperactivity, alongside declines in motor and social skills. Anxiety rates doubled, and roughly a third more children were reported to be hyperactive. More troubling still, those effects did not fade. As these children reached adolescence, their life satisfaction was worse, and Quebec experienced a rise in juvenile crime compared with the rest of Canada.
Heckman was blunt about why outcomes differed so sharply from smaller programs. Quebec’s system, he said, amounted to “warehouses”, impersonal environments where quality suffered. “Quality has to be a sine qua non of the whole enterprise.”
That warning should resonate in New Mexico.
Despite years of increased spending on K–12 and pre-K education, New Mexico continues to rank near the bottom nationally in student outcomes, a reality that should temper confidence in large, centralized expansions. At the same time, the state’s child welfare system has faced repeated scrutiny for failures in oversight and accountability.
These realities raise an unavoidable question: Why rush to pour more money into another large government-run system when existing ones have struggled to deliver measurable improvements?
There is another path forward.
New Mexico can support families without locking itself into a one-size-fits-all entitlement. Lawmakers can prioritize targeted help for families who truly need it, expand parent-directed options that respect family choice, protect faith-based and in-home providers, and insist on transparency and accountability for every public dollar spent.
A budget is a moral document. Childcare policy is not just about workforce participation or economic growth, it is about childhood itself.
If legislators truly want to put children first, they must look beyond slogans, confront hard evidence honestly, and choose policies that protect development, respect families, and serve the long-term well-being of New Mexico’s youngest citizens.
