The Trump administration is drafting a plan to allow married couples with a stay-at-home spouse to collect child care subsidies, a policy championed by Vice President JD Vance, using funds from a federal program intended to assist working parents, according to people familiar with the discussions. The change would create the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home and raise their children, one of the most significant efforts by the Trump administration to harness federal funds to promote a traditional view of families. To do so, officials are seeking to use a Health and Human Services Department fund created in the 1990s to help low-income and working-class parents afford child care. Under the draft new rule, parents who stay home with their children could benefit from the program, which typically provides about $9,000 per child each year.

The move could redirect money away from working parents and their child care providers, critics said. About 80 percent of the 870,000 families who currently get child care subsidies have single working parents, most of them mothers. The plan is seen as a top priority of Mr. Vance and incorporates policies in legislation written by Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was a senator from Florida. The change could be made without approval from Congress.

Some family policy experts warned the changes would hurt working parents. "Expanding the eligibility without increasing funding would mean more parents competing for the same dollars," said Joshua Mc Cabe, director of social policy at the Niskanen Center. The $12 billion Child Care and Development Fund, run by the Health Department's Administration for Children and Families, was created during the Clinton administration.