https://mises.org/wire/family-fades-governments-subsidize-daycares-and-nursing-homes
Human life is given meaning and sustenance by various forms of community: the church, the nuclear family, the extended family, fraternal organizations, businesses, etc. But as the state has grown, civil society has shrunk.

The state over the centuries has absorbed an increasing share of the resources, functions, and moral authority of these other institutions. In countries where the state succeeds in finally absorbing competing institutions, the result is totalitarianism.

One striking example of how the state has encroached on the domain of civil society in general and the family in particular is the care of the young and the old. Through its financing of daycares, K-12 schools, and nursing homes (among other options) the state gradually

encroaches on what were once integral functions of the family. It inserts itself as a wedge between children, the elderly, and the rest of the family.

By supplanting the family in caring for the young and the old, not only does the state increase the role it plays in society here and now, it also erodes the competency of the family in the long term. By performing these functions in place of the family,

the ability of the family to perform its former responsibilities atrophies and withers.

An institution, through long neglect of once essential functions, loses the knowledge and ability to perform these functions, and even the belief that this function belongs to its sphere.

A Look at The Tentacles

When I think of government-provided daycare, I think of difficult-to-fire DMV employees entrusted with dozens of strangers’ six-month-old babies.

The Bolsheviks actively saw state-provided childcare as a way of destroying the traditional family.

The Elderly

About 1.3 million Americans live in nursing homes rather than with their families. In fiscal year 2010, 66.6 percent of the $207.9 billion of spending on long-term care expenditures came from the government.

The Vampirism of Double Taxation

What is so harmful about using taxes to fund these services? Some families who would prefer to take care of their children and elderly parents themselves in their own homes are stripped of the resources they would have used to do so,

as these resources are taxed away to pay for daycare and nursing home subsidies, government schools, etc.

In effect, those who want to take care of their families are forced to pay twice to do so, first for the subsidies they’re not using and second to take care of their families themselves. When families are taxed but outsourcing family obligations is subsidized,

there will be more of the latter, and the family bond will dissolve.

What about the Poor?

When the state pours resources into an output, it hasn’t summoned these resources ex nihilo. It’s taken these resources from society, and so the employers, family members,and charities that would have ushered the poor into the middle class are all left less

able to do so. The state takes from the left pocket of society and gives to the right pocket, minus the share that covers the salaries of the bureaucrats who arrange the transfer and whatever is lost through fraud, corruption, and incompetence.