New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham on Her Fight to Make Childcare Free

Even as the right touts natalism and tradwife values, taking care of children in America has never been a more expensive or challenging proposition: A 2024 study conducted by the Department of Labor found that American families spend between 8.9% and 16.0% of their median income on full-day care for just one child. At least one state in the country, though, isn’t willing to accept the White House’s rollbacks on programs like Head Start; in New Mexico, families will have access to no-cost universal childcare beginning in November.

Ahead of the initiative’s rollout, Vogue spoke to New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham about her own family’s struggles to afford childcare, her plans for making New Mexico a “cradle-to-career investment state,” and how she sees the Trump administration’s legislative priorities negatively affecting children and families in New Mexico and across the country.

Vogue: As a mother of two, do you think New Mexico’s new free-childcare initiative would have helped you when your kids were younger?

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham: Oh, no question. I’ll be 66 this month, and earlier in my career, you weren’t allowed to miss work. I wasn’t allowed to have my kids’ pictures at work. They could ask you if you were pregnant or planning to be pregnant, you could not talk about your family or their health, and I am a lawyer, so it was not a good climate for women. I struggled to figure out how to pay for childcare, and when I ran for governor in 2018, it was part of the platform to get an early-childhood cabinet up and running, but nothing brings it home like your own children. I’m a grandmother, and my daughter is lucky, but navigating childcare, finding it, and paying $1,800 a month—it’s crazy expensive, more than her mortgage. She’s fine, but this is an issue for young families that is at least partially responsible for declining birth rates and families struggling to figure out equity in their lives, whether that’s starting a business, going back to school to change their career, or buying a house. You just can’t make any of those choices. This was a 2018 commitment, and we got it all done before I’m leaving this job, and I’m really excited and very proud that we are a cradle-to-career investment state in New Mexican families.