Children Are Our Best Investment

At Galvanize USA, we routinely ask women what their top concerns and priorities for America are. Women from all walks of life were fairly aligned in their responses this year! In our research with FrameShift, we learned that:

• Traditionalists ranked their concerns as violence, inflation, and government handouts (which they see as negative). 
• Individualists ranked theirs as politics in general, inflation, and gun violence.
• Trusters listed gun control, equality, and affordable housing (which they see as positive) and inflation.

Inflation and the economy came up as a top concern for every segment. Many women expressed worries about meeting their family’s basic needs. Some also expressed more systemic fears about how unmet needs could lead to crime, violence, or even revolution. 

“This impacts so many other issues—they’re all made worse by rising costs and inflation. The increase in the cost of food is the most frightening. When you start to not be able to afford to feed your family, you don’t have anything to lose. Most revolutions start that way.”

Traditionalist, 40, Pennsylvania

Different groups of women placed the blame for inflation in different places: some blame the wealthy, others blame government leaders, and some blame people in their out-groups. But nearly everyone agreed about why this issue is so important: they’re thinking about the wellbeing of children and future generations.

“Prices of everything are going up. As a single parent trying to feed my kids, what type of bad choices would I make just in order to make ends meet? There are some worrying trends coming.”

Individualist, 32, Pennsylvania

Everyone wants kids to be safe, fed, and housed. They also want kids to be loved, supported, and have access to the type of care that prepares them to be good citizens. That’s why childcare has become an excellent proxy issue for larger economic concerns—it’s sure better than fact battling over the specifics of subsidies and tax policies—and part of why Galvanize USA has been reaching women with messages like this one:

This message successfully builds support for the idea that the US economy can’t thrive until the federal government makes child care affordable for all families, regardless of their need or whether they paid into the system. It really works, too. This message built support across the entire ideological spectrum! It built support among both urban and suburban women. It built support among older voters, younger voters, and parents and non-parents alike.

Of course, it takes more than seeing one video to reliably realign someone’s civic choices with their vision for America. We don’t just want women to want the government to act on childcare, we want them to join together and use their civic power to make it a reality! That’s where Dear Grace and the entire community program come in. As we connect with thousands of subscribers daily, they read advice columns, watch focus groups, and take quizzes that help them build up their civic power.

As they follow along with Grace, they’re making sense of everything they hear about the economy and sorting out what really matters to them. Looks like it’s working—our community is up to 91% agreement on paid leave in the quiz above! It seems our community agrees that children really are our best investment.