Obama’s middle-class blind spot

Guess which kind of family was left out in the cold by President Obama as he unveiled his plan to help middle-class families in his State of the Union address? The traditional two-parent family with a single breadwinner.

The president pitched his plan as part of an agenda in which “everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules” in part by “lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.” But by design or omission, his plan does virtually nothing for married families with a parent at home, usually the mother.

The president’s plan would triple the existing child-care tax credit to $3,000 for two-earner families with children under 5 and a combined income of less than $120,000, and it would establish a new $500 credit for families in which both spouses work. The plan would provide tax relief—which would no doubt help with the cost of child care, commuting, etc.—to middle-class families with both parents in the workforce. But families who choose to have a parent at home would see none of this tax relief.

The White House has trumpeted the plan’s “fairness.” But according to data from the Census Bureau, today about one-quarter of married families have a parent at home, more than one-third of married families with young children have a parent at home, and an even larger share of married families will have a parent step out of the workforce for several months to care for the children. It seems patently unfair to offer a plan targeting middle-class families that excludes such a large share of American families.

This approach is all the more mystifying because the White House had other, more-inclusive policy options to help families. For instance, in a bid to shore up the economic fortunes of all working families, Sens. Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) have proposed expanding the child tax credit to $3,500 from its current $1,000 and extending it to payroll taxes, i.e., Social Security and Medicare.

The Lee-Rubio plan would do a lot for millions of working- and middle-class families, whether or not they have two parents in the workforce. As Messrs. Lee and Rubio wrote in an op-ed for this newspaper in September, their proposal is rooted in a recognition that all families, not just two-earner families, “shoulder the financial burden of raising the next generation of taxpayers, who will grow up to fund the Social Security and Medicare benefits of all future seniors.”

If Mr. Obama were interested in helping all families and finding bipartisan ground in the new Congress, he could have adopted some version of the Lee-Rubio plan.

The president’s plan is also mystifying because there is no popular groundswell to exclude or devalue stay-at-home parents. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, 60% of Americans say children are better off when a parent stays home, while only 35% say children are just as well off with two working parents.

Pew also found that, among parents with children younger than 18, a majority of both mothers and fathers say it is better for children when they have a parent at home. The same is true for women in general, of whom 55% say it is better for a child to have a parent at home.

Perhaps Mr. Obama is out of touch with the views of ordinary Americans. In a speech in Providence, R.I., this fall, he spoke about the dilemma facing many working families choosing between putting their child in low-quality or expensive day care and having a parent at home: “[S]ometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make.”

Mr. Obama, we can safely say, didn’t intend to demean or dismiss the choice and sacrifices that millions of parents make to be at home with their children. He was, however awkwardly, trying to make the point that no mother should feel required to stay at home because the cost or quality of child care makes working seem imprudent.

Yet his comment certainly did not convey a positive or affirming message to the parents, usually women, who choose to stay at home. Likewise, the plan Mr. Obama unveiled Tuesday night to help middle-class families may not reflect his party’s indifference or hostility toward the traditional family. But it sure looks like families that don’t fit the president’s progressive model of how to best combine work and family life are increasingly overlooked in today’s Democratic Party.

Mr. Wilcox directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Home Economics Project of the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies.