The New York Times recently ran a story on Alex Adams, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Administration for Families and Children (ACF). Adams, who used to oversee Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare, has reportedly suggested he wants federal childcare regulations to “fit on an index card in my back pocket” and is preparing to “barbecue a lot of sacred cows.” Based on Adams’ tenure in Idaho, one of those cows he may set his sights on — and perhaps the most dangerous to kill — is the idea of maximum child-to-adult ratios in childcare settings.Child-to-adult ratios cap the number of children a single caregiver can supervise. The numbers shift by age — for instance, while these vary by state, a common ratio is six two-year-olds per adult. Intuitively, this makes sense: while most providers have no desire to cram thirty little kids into one room, there’s good reason to prevent someone from doing just that to hike up revenue — a real situation investigators uncovered in 2019 in, you guessed it, Idaho.That deregulatory attitude is strong in Idaho. In 2025, despite ongoing safety concerns, a state legislator proposed HB-243, which would have entirely eliminated state-mandated ratios and overridden localities’ authority to set ratio standards stricter than the state’s. Instead, providers could set their own ratio, so long as they alone deemed it reasonable. Proponents of the bill reasoned that parents wouldn’t choose the thirty-kids-per-adult program, suggesting that the market would sort out any safety concerns. But in a deeply supply-constrained childcare system where many are forced to choose between a suboptimal (cheap, convenient) program or failing to pay bills, this is asking for trouble, if not tragedy.Idaho’s proposed ratio elimination was only blocked after a state senate hearing where the uncle of an eleven-week-old boy who had died in an out-of-ratio program gave emotional testimony. “An investigation into…
