New Mexico Becomes 1st State to Guarantee Free Child Care

Santa (Fe) came early this year.

By Danielle Han  |  September 12, 2025 | 1:39pm
Photo: Getty Images Politics
New Mexico Becomes 1st State to Guarantee Free Child Care

Compare American childcare policies with pretty much every other country in the world, and you’ll find the U.S. sits somewhere at the bottom of the barrel. While the laurel isn’t our only humiliating one, it’s an odd one, considering those in favor of fixing the problem make up a bipartisan crowd. But on Monday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) took a step to turn the tide and declared her state will become the first to guarantee free and universal child care. 

Starting in November, new parents—no matter how much they make and with no required co-pay—will be eligible for free services. “Child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation, and New Mexico’s future prosperity,” Lujan Grisham announced in an accompanying statement. “By investing in universal child care, we are giving families financial relief, supporting our economy, and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow and thrive.”

New Mexico has been an outlier in America’s abysmal child care (and educational) policies since 2019, when MLG passed the Early Childhood Education and Care Department (something she’d campaigned for since 2018). And in 2022, the Land of Enchantment became the first state to offer universal childcare through an educational endowment fund, though specifically for families who earned up to 400% of the federal poverty level (a requirement that qualified about half of the state’s kids). Owing to that initiative, the state’s poverty rates fell, childcare worker wages rose, and those who relied on the service attested that they had better financial stability. Monday’s change will add to that provision.

“This historic win is the result of years of organizing by early educators and advocates across the state,” OLÉ New Mexico, a nonprofit organization that advocates for early childhood education, told Jezebel in a statement, “including [for] members of our organizations and others, who have made affordable child care and higher wages for early educators a top priority.”

If the changes in 2022 provided good returns, the trend looks even more promising this time around: per state estimates, the new policy is projected to save an average family around $12,000 per kid per year. (Meanwhile, Florida’s out here subjecting its kids to an anti-vaccine regime.)

Still, there are some hurdles to overcome. New Mexico has a shortage of child care workers, a problem it is trying to fix with stronger recruitment numbers and better worker-pay incentives. According to the governor’s announcement, the state estimates it will need 5,000 more professionals if it is to run its ambitious system. 

According to data collected in 2024, taking the financial burden out of the cost of child care (which pushes around 134,000 American families into poverty each year) could have profound implications for the rest of the country. Since New Mexico is home to one of the worst poverty rates in the U.S. it could inspire other states to follow suit. The biggest hurdle now being that we have a party in power that thinks having kids is more mandatory than paying people to care for them.

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